Today I ran 21.1km, half of the full event in the Jerusalem Marathon. There were an estimated 25,000 people in total participating in the different runs.

It was a magnificent sight of orange-clad athletes. The route covered some of the most wonderful vistas in the world. We worked our way through the romantic Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, with locals cheering on. We had a stunning view of the Mount of Olives, which boasts an importance for both Jews and Christians. A moment later, I looked eastwards towards the village of Silwan and beyond in the direction of Jericho and the Dead Sea. Really stunning.

Nothing is simple in Jerusalem. Over the two hours or so, the weather changed from light rain to windy to sunny and back again. So unreliable. Is that why peace negotiations in this part of the world are complicated? Yet for all the vagaries, the colour and the noise of the event, something else was going on.

This was the sixth annual Jerusalem Marathon. On the one hand, the event (as usual?) was held against the backdrop of violence. The stabbings by Palestinians sadly have continued this week. In contrast, the runners were not just greeted in Hebrew and English. “Good morning” echoed out in Arabic and German and other languages in the centre of Israel’s capital. Participants came from all over the world, and not just Kenya or Ethiopia. I saw one runner sporting a vest from a Christian mission in Hungary.  As for the crowd, tourists of many persuasions joined the locals in cheering us on. It was amazing to be a part of this.

However, in some ways, one of the most inspiring moments for me occurred as we approached the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Now this is a wonderful bit of engineering, dating back nearly 500 years. And whilst the design is Ottoman and the area is divided into four “quarters”, for Jews this is the “centre of the world”. The Temples were built here. An outer wall of the Second Temple – the Western or Wailing Wall – still stands today.

It was amazing to think that Jews, in fact everyone, can freely run around it. For hundreds of years that was not the case, including when the Jordanians were in charge up to 1967. And that is when I began to think about Meir Dagan, a former Israeli general and head of the Mossad, who died yesterday.

Dagan had always wanted the public in Israel and his ‘spy acquaintances’ around the world to know what had inspired him. Some years back, he came across a picture of the Nazis beating and humiliating his grandfather. He was determined that history should not repeat itself. That meant Jerusalem remaining the unified capital of Israel, welcoming people of all backgrounds.

Here is to the seventh marathon and all of its participants, whatever their beliefs.