Marathon runners owe their agony and glory to a compelling but utterly fictional story about an Athenian herald.
The myth goes that in 490 B.C., Pheidippides ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens, a distance of about forty-two kilometres, to announce a Greek triumph over Persia. After shouting, “We were victorious!” he died on the spot. Apparently he didn’t hydrate enough during his run.
The truth is, Pheidippides was a better runner than that. According to Herodotus, he ran from Athens to Sparta, a distance of about 250 kilometres, in two days.
Along the way, he encountered a god named Pan; their conversation led to Pan helping the Athenians win the Battle of Marathon. This may explain the later confusion of the story of Pheidippides with the battlefield of Marathon. It also may be the first reported case of hallucinations experienced by a tired long-distance runner.
Over the next 500 years, the story evolved into the legend we know today. Perhaps it was adjusted by a Greek author who was the forefather of the writers of made-for-TV movies. Anyone who runs marathons should give thanks that someone got the story wrong and they’re not being challenged to do a “Sparta” of 250 kilometres.
In 1879, Browning wrote of Pheidippides:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried, “To Acropolis!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!
Athens is saved, thank Pan, go shout!” He flung down his shield
Ran like fire once more: and the space ‘twixt the fennel-field
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: “Rejoice, we conquer!” Like wine through clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died – the bliss!
Browning never may have covered the distance himself, but at least he understood then, as thousands will today, the joy felt when, after running forty-two kilometres, you finally get to stop. And whenever you’re watching others run, remember to cheer by shouting, “The meed is thy due!”
Stirred by the poem, the French semantics expert Michel Bréal suggested to his friend Baron Pierre de Coubertin that a forty-kilometre race be added to the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. Breal’s participation is appropriate: semantics is defined as the study of meaning, and some marathon runners find themselves searching for meaning at about thirty-seven kilometres.
De Coubertin liked the idea, so the Greeks ran an Olympic trial that is believed to have been the first marathon race, won in three hours eighteen minutes. Give me a time machine and a year of intense training, and I might have a shot at staying with the leaders in that one.
Pictures of the first Olympic marathon show men running in long pants along deserted roads. Spiridon Louis won in just under three hours – including a stop for a glass of wine. Consider that the first-ever aid station. Water, Gatorade or Cabernet Sauvignon?
After that first Olympic marathon of forty kilometres, the next six each had a different distance, ranging up to 42.75 kilometres. In the 1908 Olympic race in London, the starting line was moved so the Royal Family could have a better view, which pretty much sums up priorities in Britain in 1908. The result was a race of 42.195 kilometres, which eventually became the standard distance. If you’ve ever missed your marathon goal time by less than a minute, you can blame the British Royal Family for that extra 200 metres.
Marathon participation has had its ups and downs, but it seems to have settled into a new phase of sustainable growth.
In the 1960s and 1970s, small numbers of people started the first boom. In 1975, for example, 146 runners competed in the first Ottawa Marathon. You don’t have to stare long at the photo from the starting line to know what decade it is: it’s a sea of long hair, sideburns and beards, looking a bit like the gates just opened at a Grateful Dead concert.
The Ottawa Marathon peaked at 4,800 runners in 1983, but then fell on hard times. In the mid-’80s, stories from the archives refer to the end of the marathon-running “fad,” and the race was officially cancelled in 1986.
But after a frenetic effort to attract investment, the 1986 race was resurrected with some 1,500 runners, plus a new ten-kilometre run held the night before the marathon.
At that time, race organizers across North America could only have dreamed of events featuring 40,000 participants or more. Maybe they got some help from Pan.
Now, as thousands every year continue a tradition that began with the fanciful legend of an Athenian herald, with help from a poet and a baron, only one question remains: Why didn’t Pheidippides borrow a horse?
Love, hate and winter
iRun to enjoy all four seasons in Canada Wayne Snowdon, Ontario
I hate winter.
I hate the cold. I hate the snow and the slush. I hate the extra clothes you have to wear, the layers, the heavy boots. I hate shovelling and scraping. From Christmas until baseball season, I do whatever I can to avoid going outside. My main ambition in life is to find a way to be somewhere else for the first four months of every year. (So far, I have failed at my main ambition in life.)
Every winter, people close to me are subjected to six months of whining. During my regular shivery rants about winter, my father used to say, “But you’re a Canadian.” To which I would point out that I had no choice in being a Canadian, whereas he, born in a less wintry country, did. Then I would scowl, put on my parka and go home.
All of which make this fact all the more peculiar: I love winter running.
Learning this was as much a surprise to me as if I had suddenly discovered that I loved brussels sprouts. If, ten years ago, you took me in a time machine to see my future self jogging in -20C weather, I would have assumed that I had been sent to some kind of forced-labour camp.
Once upon a time, I was a fair-weather runner. If I managed an outdoor run on one nice day in March, I thought I was being hardy. In the winter months, I exercised indoors, the way God intended.
Running on a treadmill was warmer than running outside, but I found it to be as boring as running in circles in your basement. If you think time is moving too quickly in your life, just get on a treadmill for half an hour. It’s amazing how long even a minute can seem. I was constantly playing games with myself to avoid looking at the clock. Just stare straight ahead and don’t look down for ten minutes, I would tell myself. Then I would run for what seemed like fifteen minutes, sneak a peek at the timer and find out it was only five.
When I started training for my first marathon, the long runs began in January. At first, I tried to figure out how I could do most of them indoors. The problem is that, at most gyms, you can’t use a treadmill for more than thirty minutes at a time.
A few people said to me, try running outside, you’ll love it. That’s not possible, I said.
Having no other choice, though, I joined a running group to prepare for the marathon. I went shopping for winter running clothes. I bought a pair of running pants, a few long-sleeve shirts, a hat and something to cover my neck, mouth and nose. I now had the complete ensemble of a cat burglar. I learned, for the first time, about fabrics that “wick away” moisture. I learned that “wick” had another meaning unrelated to candles.
I started running with a friend in sub-zero temperatures. We did a couple of short early-morning runs when the temperature was minus -25, and another on a mid-January morning that was minus -30, with a windchill factor of minus -41.
What I learned very quickly was that I felt comfortable ten minutes into the run, no matter how cold it was. The wind was sometimes frustrating, but the freezing temperatures stopped being an issue as soon as you were warmed up. I started to feel like I was tougher than I had thought, like I was withstanding winter conditions that normally made me cower.
A month later came the big test: