A marathon effort by GoodGym runner/s at the Authentic Athens Marathon!

First of all I'd like to share with you the background to the great marathon.

The first thing to know is that Marathon is a place. It is a town in Greece and the site of the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, when the invading Persians were defeated by the Athenians. Legend has it that a messenger named Pheidippides was sent back to Athens with the news of their victory. He ran the entire distance without stopping and arrived to exclaim “We have won!” before collapsing and dying of exhaustion.

Whether this story is true is another matter (still debated by historians), but the road from Marathon to Athens is indeed 42 kilometers long. It wasn't until the late 19th century, however, that the idea of creating a race of this distance came up.

The Olympic tradition was revived in Europe in the 19th century, and it was decided to include a long-distance running race: the marathon. The man credited with the idea was a French philologist called Michel Bréal, who pitched the idea to the founder of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Coubertin. And so during the first modern Olympic Games, held in Greece in 1896, the first marathon race was run. Seventeen runners competed and only nine finished the race, which was won by the Greek Spyridon Louis. That race, by the way, had a length of 40 km. It took until 1921 for the marathon distance to be officially fixed at 42.195 km.

Ben's experience of the day

Waking up at 5am wouldn't please many people, however when it's to run a marathon that has been on your bucket list since only knows when, there was definitely excitement in the air. The hostel where I was residing had 6 people in total running the marathon, so many alarms were all going off to make sure that nobody overslept!

Showered and feeling good, albeit a little full after devouring two breakfasts we made our way to get the bus which would take us to the marathon start line. The first thing we noticed was that there were loads of buses! I counted 6 of them when we stopped at the light and obviously there were loads more!

After a 50 minute journey we arrived into Marathon! There was a stadium packed with runners, portaloos, catering for bladders and also an opportunity to have a photo with the Olympic flame! So after making use of the toilet facilities a photo opportunity with the flame was in order... The queue was long but we made it with only minutes to spare.

Bang!

We were off! The course was flattish for the first 10 miles then there was a grueling 10 miles of incline before finishing with 6 miles downhill and flat.

Bucket list marathon ticked off the list!

3 hours 25 minutes after starting I had finished! I can only imagine what it was like all those years ago when Pheidippides ran the marathon on his own... But I'm very thankful he did as I (we) owe it to him for the very existence of this amazing race.

If you want anymore information about the race you can have a look on the Athens Marathon website or if you want to talk to me further about my experience if the day you can email me bena@goodgym.org

Thank you Greece for hosting an epic Marathon!