The scoop on Athens

So now I’m awake enough to remember, and to coordinate my fingers with my brain, here’s my summary of the Athens Marathon:

The course follows the legend which began the event of marathon racing. The greek messenger Pheidippides is said to have ran 25 miles from the battlefield near the town of Marathon to Athens, bringing news of victory over the Persians. He then collapsed and died, but that wasn’t part of our race plan for the 2008 event. However it is a notoriously tough route- the difficulty is something the organisers boast of in the race programme, and there were few fun-runners, and no-one dressed in an animal suit or pantomine horse. Even at the registration you could tell these were serious runners, wiry and tanned.

The race seemed very well organised. We runners were taken by coach from Athens to the stadium in Marathon at 7am, and there were plenty of toilets and buses for storing bags at the start. By the time the race kicked off at 9 it was already almost 20oC, and we’d already seen the whole route, albeit backwards and from 5 feet above the pavement.

Marathon is a small town, and the first steps were incredibly inspiring, surrounded by history and beautiful scenery. Along the side were orange groves, rustic cottages, and fruit stalls, occasionally broken up by a petrol station closed for Sunday. Now and then there would be locals to wave us on, having brought out stools to sit on by the roadside and gathered their whole families for the occasion.

The first 18K was undulating, but the trouble really started after that, with a continuous uphill climb for the next 10. It was sometime during this period that many apparently seasoned runners slowed to a walk, and we saw a brave soul dressed as a centurion collapsed by the side of the road, his armour practically steaming. We’d also entered the outskirts of Athens and were running on the very straight, multiple-lane, main road into the city. At times running along such a wide, ‘cityish’ road littered with drinks bottles and dust but without any traffic gave me the feeling of being in a disaster movie, a feeling magnified by the red, agonised faces of everyone around.

After this epic hill, the rest of the route sloped gently (mostly) downwards and the little clusters of supporters grew more frequent and more enthusiastic, even for the stragglers like us. There were markers every km until the 41st. I’m not sure if this was intentional but I liked the wait, as in waiting for the 41 sign to appear, it was a really nice surprise to suddenly see the finish in sight and know we were actually approaching 42. The end itself was spectacular, running down a leafy avenue, past saluting guards in traditional Greek costume and turning a corner to see the magnificent stadium underneath the shadow of huge olympic rings. I thought I might be crying or crawling in to the line, but the atmosphere gave me a second wind and we managed a strong finish. WooHoo!