Photo: Sinistra e Libertà, Flickr, CC

The events taking place in Iran for the past three weeks have made me thinking about this topic. Would the situation in Iran been different if access to the internet was part of the UN’s declaration of human rights?

Isn’t it time to start thinking about internet as a utility, as something that is so integrated and important in life as electricity or access to water? And if we think about internet as an utility, not “just” as entertainment, doesn’t that require some legal changes as well, for example in UN’s declaration of human rights? I’ve written about the same topic in today’s issue of Morgenbladet (in Norwegian, and ironically, you need a subscription to read the article… I’ve decided to make an English version as well because I think this idea should be spread to non-Norwegian readers as well) as well at the Personal Democracy Forum’s blog.

Photo: striatic, Flickr, CC

Take a closer look at article 19 in the 61 years old declaration that states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Internet has become an crucial medium for freedom of speech supporters all over the world, which as also been magnified by heavy use by the protest movement in Iran. But Iranian authorities are among the toughest regimes in the world in censuring and excluding Iranians from the internet, documentet byOpen Net Initiative’s recent Iran report about internet censorship and filtering, Wall Street Journal’s article about Iranian surveillance supported by equipment from Nokia and Simens, and The Atlantic’s article about Internet Surveillance and Iran: A Primer.

France’s highest court, the Constitutional Court has already declared that access to the internet is a“fundamental human right”. That happened in June, after the court struck down what would have been one of the world’s toughest laws against illegal downloading, also called “three strikes” or Loi Hadopi. In addition, Estonia and Greece have also stated that internet access is a human right.

Iran has developed one of the most advanced surveillance- and filtering systems in the world, in the same league as China, which has advanced internet filters and  demands that every pc in the country should have an inbuilt internet filter by July 1. Through Iranians writing on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, we know that Iranian government have shut down internet access all together for periods, or more commonly, selected sites.

What if internet access was declared a human right? The French Constitutional Court said (in relation to the three-strikes case): “The internet is a fundamental human right that cannot be taken away by anything other than a court of law, only when guilt has been established there”.

Cory Doctorow has already predicted that the a UN convention will enshrine network access as a human right.

This should be a topic at UN’s next General Assembley this fall.

Photo: David Clow, Flickr, CC

The highlights from this weeks Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York – what I call the dream conference for politics, media and technology geeks – are many, but Vivek Kundra’s presentation is clearly among them. Kundra is president Barack Obama’s chief technology officer (no one has ever had that title in the White House adminstration), and he was one of two people who received standing ovation on PDF (the other was Michael Wesch, an amazing communicator. He is professor at Kansas State University and you can watch most of his presentation “The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube Culture and the Politics of Authenticity” here).

Kundra (and a smart woman, Beth Novak, more about her later) has brought some revolutionary ideas into the Obama administration. Again and again he stressed the need for government to be open and accessible. He has only been in office since March, but has had time to launch among other things, two impressive websites: data.gov (public datasets that people can use and build new applications with), recovery.gov (show how the recovery money is spent) and yesterday, he and director of new media, Macon Phillips, launched the IT dashboard. The IT dashboard shows how federal government spend money on IT investments and give users the ability to track investment over time.

Some spectacular failures in IT investments (Kundra said that US government spends about $70 billion a year on IT,  and he mentioned a 2008 report that concluded that $30 billion in IT programs were in trouble) are some of the reason why the IT dashboard has been created. Another are the guiding principles behind the Obama administration: Transparency. Accountability. Responsibility. Kundra encourage people to give feedback on the data and the investments.

- We are launching a platform that allow us to tap into the best thinking. We are changing the way we spend on technology, how we interact with people and how we govern, said Kundra.

In other words: Open source policy making, the complete opposite of Bush’ philosophy. As Jay Rosen, NY University professor put it in a comment to the Republican’s new media director, Todd Herrman: ” Opacity was on Bush’ agenda for 8 years”. Mother Jones has also written about Kundra’s presentation.

Is it still early to judge how well these efforts are working, something Sunlight Foundation (working to improve transparency in government) clearly will keep a close eye on, but I’ve never seen any more promising efforts to open up government and change policy making before.

If you are really interested in these topics, I highly recommend you to read Beth Noveck’s new book, “Wiki Government”, where she outline the future of government. Micah Sifry (one of the organizers of PDF) called the book “the bible if you are interested in open government”. I’ve started reading it, and it truly turns all traditional ideas of policy making upside down.

I’m at the Personal Democracy Conference in New York and after only one hour this seems very promising.This is the dream conference for tech, politics and media geeks. You can join in the conversation on Twitter at #pdf09 (at this point, 2538 tweets are written – a very talkative crowd, the biggest trending topic at Twitter right now, after Iran…) You can also check out this site to see who the most active Twitter people are. You can follow my tweets from the conference here.

The most interesting line so far in the conference came from Andrew Rasiej (one of the organizers) when he was moderating a panel with Joe Rospars (Obama’08) and Mark McKinnon (McCain’ 08) He said that the word PUBLIC (also meaning documents) must be redefined. “Public should be redefined as open to everyone – searchable, readable, accessible online.”

Excellent.

I hope lots of politicians, bureacrats, companies, organizations, etc will read and understand his words, and stop sending out datasets in PDF format.

The next challenge is to redefine the word PRIVACY, but that is another huge topic that I will have to leave for later.

I’ve started writing for the PDF blog, and my first blogpost is about Political geeks in Europe, take a look!

I liked this quote from Timonty Garton Ash’ article in the Guardian yesterday: Twitter counts more than armouries in this new politics of people power:

Probably the single most important thing the US state department has done for Iran recently was to contact Twitter over the weekend, to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that could have taken down service to Iranians for some crucial hours of people power ­protest. Welcome to the new politics of the 21st century.

Please take time to read the whole article, Ash is good, as usual!

I will recommend everyone to watch this video about the Iranian blogosphere. It vizualizes what I wrote about in my previous blog post about Iranian bloggers.

(via the Daily Dish and this Wired article about hacking in Iran)

It has been incredible to follow the developments in Iran over the internet the last few days. Iran’s disputed presidental election has fired up one of the wildest social media protests I’ve ever seen. Within minutes, thousands of tweets are posted on the #iranelection and earlier tonight, I came across these amazing images from the protests in Tehran via @ninanyc on Twitter. People are replacing their profile images with green squares on different social media platforms in support of the main opposition leader Hussein Mossavi, while the extremist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed victory. This election screams ELECTION FRAUD!

Another interesting tendency we’ve seen today is how Twitter has been used to spread proxy addresses for Iranians to avoid governmental internet filters, such as this one spread via the comedian Stephen Fry:

RT@stephenfry: Our Iranian friends can access Twitter from 148.233.239.24 Port:80 in Tehran. Can avoid govt filters from here. #iranelection

You should also take a look at the global blogging portal Global Voice’s Iran coverage. The citizen-journalism photo site Demotix has more Iran images, which you can also find on this Iranian Flickr site (via @oovrebo).

All of this reminded me of an article I wrote about Iranian bloggers back in 2005 for a Norwegian journal at the University of Oslo, Babylon. The journal has a crappy website without  archive, so I had to copy the article from my mailbox. It is Norwegian unfortunately for my international reader, but I don’t have time to translate it properly right now (here for the Google Translate version).

The article is a good reminder that Iran has had a huge and active blogosphere for several years. Recently I learned that one of the bloggers that I interviewed for the article, Hossein Derakhshan (also called the “blog father of Iran”) was arrested in Iran in November 2008, charged for spying for Israel. I have no clues about what has happened to “Hoder” – let me know if you do!

But I see that someone has started a support group on for him on Facebook.  I also wrote an article about him in Dagbladet in 2005.

Anyway, here is the article in Norwegian about the Iranian blogosphere in 2005:

De farlige bloggerne

De har lagt ned aviser og arrestert kritiske journalister, nå prøver myndighetene i Iran å kneble bloggerne. Men unge, smarte iranere finner hullene i den statlige nettsensuren.
Tekst: Bente Kalsnes

Iran og Kina har en tvilsom felles interesse: internettsensur. Kina har lenge vært kjent for å drive verdens strengeste internettsensur, blant annet ved å sensurere ord som ”demokrati” og ”menneskerettigheter” i søkemotorer, men de siste årene har også iranske myndigheter skjønt at internett er farlig for landets innbyggere. Først slo de ned på pornografiske sider som ikke sømmet seg for iranske statsborgere, men etter hvert har myndighetene skjønt at politiske nettsider er minst like fordervende som pupper og lår. Det siste it-sjefene i Teheran har fått snusen i, er blogger – nettjournaler som jevnlig oppdateres med kommentarer og linker av en eller flere personer. Denne artikkelen handler om hvordan iranske myndigheter tror de kan drive internettsensur, og iranske bloggeres forsøk på å omgå den.

Bloggeksplosjon
I dag finnes det omtrent 5 millioner internettbrukere i Iran, i følge Open Net Initiative. Iran har opplevd en eksplosiv vekst siden 2001, da 1 million iranere gikk på nettet. Bare i Teheran finnes det anslagsvis 1500 internettkafeer, og The Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) forventer at tallet på iranske internettbrukere vil stige til 25 millioner innen 2009. Denne veksten ønsker myndighetene å kontrollere. Private internettleverandører (som Telenor eller Chello i Norge) må godkjennes av The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, og internettleverandørene må implementere filter for nettsider og e-post. I 2001 iverksatte TCI et krav om at internettleverandører må sensurere alt materiale som er umoralsk eller som svekker statens sikkerhet, eksempelvis nettsider for opposisjonsgrupper. Ved bruk av software fra amerikanske SmartFilter, kan iranske myndigheter blokkere utenlandske nettsider.

Likevel viser en undersøkelse foretatt av Iranske studenters nyhetsbyrå at folk har mer tillit til internett enn til mer tradisjonelle medier som tv og radio. På grunn av den strenge statlige sensuren mot tradisjonelle medier, begynte mange iranere i 2000 å lage alternative nyhetssider på internett for å unngå å bli arrestert. Den 30 år gamle bloggeren Hossein Derakhshan har mye av æren for at det i dag finnes rundt 70 000 aktive blogger på persisk. Fram til 2001 hadde han sin egen teknospalte i den reformvennlige avisa Asr-e Azadegan i Teheran, men han og hundrevis av andre journalister mistet jobbene sine da tolv reformvennlige aviser ble stengt i et statlig sensurraid. Derakhshan flyttet til Toronto for å komme unna sensuren. I Toronto jobbet han for BBC, men han savnet sine iranske lesere. Blogging ble løsningen.

Ordet blogging kommer fra det engelske ordet web log – nettjournal, og ble første gang brukt i 1997. En blogg er en nettbasert publikasjon i omvendt kronologisk rekkefølge, det vil si at de siste tekstene ligger øverst. Tekstene er ofte utstyrt med linker til andre tekster på nettet. Folk kan kommentere i bloggen, og bloggforfatteren kan linke til andre blogger. Enkle verktøy og interaktiviteten med andre mennesker er noe av forklaringen til bloggsuksessen som startet i USA gjennom selskap som blogger.com. I dag finnes det 16,7 millioner blogger i verden, i følge bloggsøkemotoren Technorati, og disse favner om et vidt spekter av genre, alt fra personlige dagbøker, politiske kommentarer og litterære eksperimenter til foto-, video- og audioblogger. Blogger har fått gjennomslag i amerikansk media etter avsløringer av faktafeil hos blant annet programleder Dan Rather i ”60 Minutes II”. I et program om president George Bush’ militærtjeneste, siterte Rather et dokument som hevdet at Bush ikke fullførte militærtjenesten sin. Dokumentets opprinnelse er nå svært omdiskutert. Rather mistet jobben etter bloggernes avsløringer.

Et enda mer spennende perspektiv ved blogging er hvilke muligheter det gir folk til å uttrykke sine meninger i politiske lukkede land. Harvard-prosjektet Global Voices samler noen av de beste bloggene fra hele verden, og hensikten er å tilrettelegge for ytringsfrihet og samtaler på tvers av landegrensene. Også i Iran. I slutten av august ble fire-årsdagen for de første iranske bloggerne markert på denne nettsiden. Hossein Derakhshan var en av pionerene som gjorde det enkelt å blogge i Iran. I 2001 fantes det ikke blogger med persiske tegn, men Derakhshan utviklet en måte å kombinere gratis verktøy fra Unicode og Blogger.com. Snart fulgte flere i hans digitale fotspor.

Sensurregimet
I dag bor Derakhshan i New York og har blitt noe så spesielt som en iransk bloggkjendis. Han skriver på engelsk og persisk om politikk, teknologi og populærkultur, og reiser fra konferanse til konferanse i Europa og USA for å snakke om hvordan blogging kan være med på å åpne opp Iran. Da iranerne gikk til presidentvalg 17. juni i år, fulgte tusenvis av lesere av bloggen Editor: Myself ferden hans tilbake til hjemlandet for å stemme. Av frykt for å bli arrestert og sendt i fengsel for sine politiske kommentarer, holdt han en lav profil, også på internett den uken han var tilbake i Teheran. Selv har han merket myndighetenes internettfrykt da hans iranske internettdomene ble sensurert, og han mistet mellom 20 og 30 prosent av sine iranske lesere. Men han har delvis omgått sensuren ved å kjøpe flere domenenavn. En del av hans lesere mottar også blogginnleggene hans på e-post, noe myndighetene ennå ikke har klart å stoppe.

Når jeg spør ham på e-post hvorfor iranske myndigheter er blant verdens strengeste på internettsensur, er Derakhshan klar i sitt syn: ”Fordi de tror at de kan holde på makta ved å kontrollere informasjonen. De føler seg truet av populære nettsider som potensielt kan utfordre prinsippene og filosofien deres”.. Hvorvidt sensurregimet vil endre seg, er han ikke sikkert på, men han er likevel optimistisk. Derakhshan forklarer: ”Dersom folk klarer å omgå de tekniske hindringene og får tilgang til sensurerte sider, kan det være at myndighetene gir opp eller inntar en mer avslappet holdning. Tekniske problemer kan også påvirke dette. Myndighetene kan bli forhindret fra å bruke utenlandske filtre på grunn av embargo eller at software de ønsker å bruke, ikke støtter persiske tegn. Iranske myndigheter har heller ikke den ekspertisen eller utstyret som kreves for å lage et effektivt og sentralisert filter slik de har i Kina.”

Midtøstens største fengsel
Iran blir kalt Midtøstens største fengsel for journalister, i 2004 satt 14 journalister fengslet i Iran. På Reportere uten grensers indeks for pressefrihet, kommer Iran svært dårlig ut. Av totalt 167 land, ligger Iran også helt i bunnsjiktet, på 158-plass (Nord-Korea ligger nederst, mens Kina er på 162-plass). I dag er banneret ”Release Ganji” å finne på de fleste iranske bloggeres nettsider.  Akkurat nå sitter den 47 år gamle journalisten Akbar Ganji fengslet på femte året i det beryktede Evin-fengselet i Nord-Teheran, beskyldt for å ha ”truet statens sikkerhet”, for å ha ”fornærmet grunnleggeren av den islamske republikken og regimets hellige verdier” og for å ha ”drevet propaganda mot den islamske republikken.” Iranske bloggere, derimot, beskriver kommentatoren og journalisten Ganji som en av Irans største helter for hans kamp for ytringsfrihet i tre reformvennlige aviser; Sobhe-e-Emrouz, Neshat og Asr-e-Azadegan. I flere artikler har han avslørt at ledere i regimet, blant annet tidligere president Hashemi Rafsanjani og tidligere sikkerhetsminister Ali Fallahian, var involvert i drapene på politiske motstandere og intellektuelle i 1998. 22. august i år avsluttet Ganji sin 71 dager lange sultestreik etter å ha fått rettet internasjonal oppmerksomhet mot Irans brudd på grunnleggende menneskerettigheter, godt hjulpet av hans advokat, Nobelpris-vinneren Shirin Ebadi.

Elendige fengselsforhold er også noe mange bloggere har fått oppleve. Etter at myndighetene la ned mesteparten av de reformvennlige avisene (mer enn 90 aviser har blitt stengt de åtte siste årene), er fokuset blitt rettet mot politiske nettsider. Bloggeren Omid Memarian har selv kjent myndighetenes vrede på kroppen. I 55 dager ble han og flere andre nettjournalister og programmerere torturert, bundet for øynene, og avbildet nakne i dusjen, uten å få vite hva galt de hadde gjort. Memarian fikk aldri prøvd saken sin for retten. I ettertid har myndighetenes juridisk talsperson, Jamal Karimirad, sagt at personer som driver uautoriserte nettsider vil bli anklaget for å “handle mot nasjonens sikkerhet, forstyrre offentligheten og for å fornærme helligheter.” Memarin, som ikke har latt seg skremme fra å bruke sitt egentlig navn i bloggen, skriver på e-post at han tror kampen mot bloggere og nettjournalister vil intensiveres i de kommende årene: ”Det nyvalgte presidenten (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, jour. anm.) og kabinettets hans er svært islamistisk og fundamentalistisk, og de tror at internett er ”house of the enemy” – fiendens hus – det samme begrepet de bruker om USA. Allerede nå har selvsensuren økt blant bloggere. Mange iranske bloggere er redd for å publisere kritiske kommentarer signert med deres virkelige navn”. Selv om myndighetene prøver å kontrollere internett så godt de kan, tror ikke Memarin de vil lykkes i det lange løp: ”Den nye generasjonen er helt vill etter det virtuelle samfunnet, alle kan jo publisere ideene sine. Jeg tror de unge og det sivile samfunnet vil finne en måte å bli lyttet til, siden internett er den eneste muligheten de har”.

Filteret vokser
En egen nettside har blitt opprettet for å overvåke overvåkerne, Stop Censoring Us – Watching Internet Censorship in Iran. Hensikten med siden er “å gi offisielle og uoffisielle beretninger om internettsensur i Iran slik at internasjonale observatører og aktivister får et bedre bilde av situasjonen for informasjonsfrihet i den islamske republikken Iran.” Siste nytt er at alle internettleverandører må filtrere ut blogrolling.com. Blogrolling er eid av det kanadiske selskapet Tucows, og tilbyr en populær tjeneste for lesere som ønsker å følge med på sine favorittblogger og bli varslet når de blir oppdatert. Blogrolling er svært populært i Iran, og har vært med på å skape et nettverk av bloggere med like interesser. Også store, populære iranske nettportaler som gooya.com og emrouz.com blir sensurert, men smarte unge iranere vet råd.

”De stopper meg ikke fra å finne det jeg søker”. Dette skriver H. Utanazad, forfatter av bloggen Brooding Persian i en e-post: ”Jeg kommer meg forbi sperrene deres, men det irriterer livet av meg. Dersom en internettleverandør er sensurert, prøver jeg bare andre helt til jeg kommer gjennom. Jeg roterer mellom seks til tolv kort til ulike internettleverandører på en måned. Dersom jeg søker etter noe på google, og de (iranske myndigheter, journ. anm) har filtrert de fem første nettsiden, hopper jeg bare ned til den tjuende. De få ganger jeg ikke får tak i informasjonen jeg søker, sender jeg en e-post til en venn i utlandet og ber han om å klippe og lime fra nettsiden, og sende meg en e-post”.

Ny konstitusjon ved hjelp av wiki
Bloggeren Hossein Derakhshan har nylig tatt nok et modig skritt for å reformere Iran ved hjelp av moderne teknologi. Han har like godt tatt initiativ til å omskrive den iranske konstitusjonen ved hjelp av det demokratiske verktøyet wiki. Wiki er en nettside alle kan redigere i, og det mest kjent eksempelet er Wikipedia, et nettleksikon skrevet og redigert av tusenvis av mennesker fra hele verden. Derakhshan ser for seg at en omskrevet versjon av den iranske konstitusjonen kan være med på å reformere det politiske systemet i Iran.

Det iranske filteret har fremdeles store hull.

Social media is the big buzz word in the Norwegian election campaign. 2005 was the election year when the parties competed on having the coolest, flashiest website, 2009 is the year when the parties are competing about being everywhere (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Nettby, Origo, etc), communicating.  We’ve seen it on TV, read about it in the newspapers, and this Friday, the Minister of Education, Bård Vegar Solhjell said on a conference (via Twitter): #Election09 might be the last where TV is more important then internet (my translation).

Still, we have to wait until September 14 to see which party manages to lure most voters to the ballot box with new digital tools.

Since TV normally is the most important medium the final weeks before an election, this it the time to keep a close eye on experimental use of social media. I’ve written about some of the tendencies before, here are some more interesting developments you should check out:

• The Liberal Party (V) has created a completely interactive website, Liberal. It is a pure social media site, where you can follow V-politicians on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and write comments. When you click to read the party’s political program, you are redirected back to the party’s official website. This site has potential, but still very few users (about 350, the site is down for updates as I’m writing this).
• The Christian Democratic Party (Krf) has launched a new website, Krf24, where you for 24 hours on June 4 could send suggestions and ideas for how the party could win the election. Pretty neat, but why not keep it open for a week? One day is way too short.  The liberals had a sarcastic comment about the new project on Twitter: While #krf24 is gearing up for 24 hours, we are going for day out and day in, every week, the whole year”.  Good point.
• The Norwegian online community Origo (famous for a hugely popular social calendar in Oslo called Underskog) is used by more and more political parties. The Labour Party (Ap) has Mitt Arbeiderparti with lots of local sites, modeled by Barack Obama’s online community My.BarackObama. The Centre Party (Sp), the Socialist Left (SV)  have also made an appearance on Origo. This way of communicating with the voters is new and different, and also gives the voters an exciting possibility to get in touch with each other – which is just as important. Let me know if you know of any interesting local developments that have occurred within any of the parties’ Origo sites.
• Last week I wrote about how the Progressive Party (Frp) lacked the internet code (in Norwegian). This past week, I’ve seen a change in their Facebook usage (no, I’m not trying to take credit:-). They are actually answering questions on Siv Jensen’s (the party leader) Facebook site, which I think is a step in the right direction.
• The conservative party (H) has bragged about how many “door knockers” they have, in the middle of this social media craze. Even though they have a heavy presence on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the party will not abolish the good ol’ door knocking in the campaign, and have aimed to knock on 100 000 doors.  They have this ambivalent relationship to how much political influence you can have online, and different representatives from the party have repeatedly talked about how important it is to actually meet and talk to people face-to-face. I think this is obvious, political influence is a combination of what is going on online and offline. The big parties with lots of resources (mainly Ap and H) are able to do both, while the smaller parties, ex. SV and V, will need to prioritize their resources much harder. V has for example made it easier to donate money online.
• New political stars will arise as the internet is a different medium than TV, print and radio. New candidates can advance in the new medium because they grasp quickly how to use if for politcial purposes. The Christian Democrats has a potential blogging star in Sondre Olsen, the Labour Party has a YouTube talent in Hadja Tadjik, the Socialist Left has a blogging/Twitter talent in Bård Vegar Solhjell, the Liberals might reach new voters through Trine Skei Grande’s Facebook site.
• Still, much can be done in order to use the new digital tools to create new politics. An excellent examples is this video “Ten Measures for Transparency Success” by Andrew Rasiej, Personal Democracy Forum/TechPresident

Jon Worth and I just finished a presentation at the Norwegian EU delegation about how new technology is shaping modern politics, with a special focus on the upcoming European Parliament election (June 4-7) and the Norwegian election campaign (national election on September 14). The slides are below, at the bottom of the blog post.

Here are some other links that we mentioned as well:

• Fix My Street and They Work for You from MySociety (that also has an excellent blog)
• Info on the Vattenfall lobby action outside the European Parliament
• The US Air Force’s social media strategy
• Bård Vegar Solhjell’s blog
• The Norwegian Liberal party’s new website, Liberal.no
• Obama’s new open date site, data.gov

As always, comments are most welcome.

This was just not my day.

It started with me dreaming that I forgot my start number and chip as I was about to start the race, and ended up with me quitting the Brussels 20K, far away from the finishing line.

Crumbled start number. Photo: Bente Kalsnes

The sun sucked all the energy out of my body, and it felt like I had nothing to give even from the start. I don’t know what went wrong. I had eaten well, slept well, haven’t been drinking alcohol lately, have trained steadily, and this was suppose to be my fourth race in one year (Brussels 20K last May, Paris-Versailles in September, and Berlin Half Marathon in April), but when I saw the weather forecast, I got worried. I’m a very Nordic runner, I prefer chilly weather, and with around 22-24 degrees today, my head and body said no.

Argh!

Luckily, I met a super friendly runner, David from Grimbergen in his 50s who also quite because of a bad pain in his leg. He ran a marathon three weeks ago and we had a great chat while we walked away from the race and the other runners. If you read this David, have a fast recovery!

To my Twitter followers and Facebook friends who wished me luck and recommended me fabulous music suggestion (@condontm, @carstenhp, @tgeriksen, @esandquist, @bjornario, @sindreholme, @geirls, Mindy, Ingrid) , thanks a lot, but not even groovy rhythms could help me today. I will do my best to make a terrific comeback at the Oslo Half Marathon in September!

Update: Some words of wisdom from my friend Mindy: “Some days we learn more from the runs we can’t finish than the runs we do.”