This is the story of how I ran the original Marathon marathon wearing a pair of (broken) barefoot sandals.
It all started as I was lying on a bed in a bunkhouse in New Mexico barely moving due to a lobster like exoskeleton of sunburn covering almost the totality of my upper body trying to come up with a fitness goal for the summer.
My overall goal was to get more lean and fit in general, but simply aimlessly grinding away at workouts that do not move in a particular direction or a have a motivating goal had never worked for me, so I tried to think of something epic and slightly wierd that could turn into a high octane story later on. I was vaguely aquanted with the tale of the first Marathon as told by Lucian and Herodotus. The story is a good one with details that will prove important later.
It was 490 BC and the Greeks were in the throes of the Persian War. A professional messenger named Phidippedes had 10 days previously done a roughly 350 mile run from Athens to Sparta and back to request reenforcements which resulted in the Greeks all assembling at Marathon. The Persian fleet had been ravaging the coastline for a time, their plan was to crush the Greeks at Marathon and then sail around the penninsula and take Athens while it was undefended. The Greeks ferociously attacked them, eventually driving them back to their ships with heavy losses. The Persians decided to stick to the original plan and sail around to vulnerable Athens anyway, what would have been around an 8 hour trip by boat.
Phidippides, while wounded, then did his famous run (which was likely closer to a sprint), reched Athens, cried to the Senate: "Joy we've won!" and promptly fell dead on the spot.
The Greek army meanwhile, exhausted, filthy and coverd in wounds and blood ran after him and were waiting at the docks in the blazing August heat as the Persian ships rolled in. This totally demoralized the Persians who were promptly crushed by the Greeks in the battle which followed.
And thus was the west was saved by a few men in sandals.
And so, somewhat in commemoration but mostly to get a small sense of what it would have been like, I started going on runs through the desert in minamalist, barefoot sandals made by a company called Xero, which were the closest thing I could find to what the Greeks would have been wearing.
After booking my flight, I had a little less than 8 weeks to train. My max distance without stopping was about 3 miles to begin with. My training amounted to one long run per week, which would increase by 2-5 miles per week, a day of tempo runs (slow/fast over a shorter distance), a moderate distance run like 6 miles, and a couple rest or treadmill sprint days at the gym in addition to calsthenics and lots of physical labor.
Running along the highway in Gallup New Mexico was a landscape immersion study unparallelled by any other in my experience. To give an example, on the 4th of July, I set out to do a 16 mile run for two reasons: First, I had done an 10 mile run the weekend before and was thus obviously a stud to whom the laws of physics did not apply. Second, 4x4 equals 16 which is a cool number and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I started out around 7:00 AM with a nice dry breeze blowing and the sun slowly coming up. I enjoyed the beatiful desert scenery and did not pay much attention to the discarded clothing, vapes, toys, broken glass, lumber, and empty beer bottles that lay scattered along the road. At mile 2 I ran through a herd of goats that had escaped onto the road and was threatened by two wild dogs. Around mile 7 I witnessed what was almost certainly a drug deal.
At miles 10.5 and 12 as I was in danger of dehydration and heat stroke, I was given water first by an ancient toothless Navajo man in an old jalopy and second by a yong Mexican guy in an SUV. At about mile 13 my head was about to go supernova and my body felt like a hotpocket in a pressurecooker, so I collapsed on the side of the road, tried to stretch and called a friend to come and pick me up with electrolytes and water. The fact that I was only a couple miles from my goal was partially assuaged by the ice bath of the century and a perfect orgy of electrolytes.
I landed in Athens a few weeks later with a friend of mine, Rob, whose brilliant idea it was to ride a unicycle during the run with a bag of water strapped to it. This is not actually as insane as it sounds since he had ridden as far as 40 miles before the normal pace of a unicycle a good bit faster than the average jogger. We spent a day or two poking around in Athens anc then the dreaded day arrived.
We took a taxi to Marathon around 5:00 in the morning and were dropped off at the official run memorial and race starting line. It was dark and cold, I pounded a couple of bottles of water for insurance and loped off onto the road feeling pretty good.
About 4 miles in, disaster struck. Two days before coming to Greece I had been playing frisbee in my sandals and had slid to a sudden halt which diconnected the strap, tore off some rubber and frazzeled some of the leather. I had applied for a replacement pair with the company, but they did not arrive in time for my run. They had been pretty well fixed with duct tape and paracord, but now a different strap came loose in a new place, and the left sandal was loosly and saucily flapping. I endured this for perhaps another 2 miles, patiently replacing the strap again and again, fearing that I might be forced to compromise my morals and put on shoes until I finally called a halt and secured it loosely with more paracord resulting in probably the most homeless looking footwear of all time.
After a couple miles of this nonsense, we came to a turnoff onto a loose rocky trail that led into the mountains. It was here that my values bacame compromised and I fell from grace and was utterly corrupted. The unicycle proved our undoing. The entire water bag strap setup had been tenuous and wonky from the get go, but now that we had hit the mountains, riding the wobbley contraption was impossible, so we shouldered it and the bag and started to scramble. And this is the part of which I am truly ashamed. I keep telling myself that if only the sandals hadn't broken, I wouldn't have done it. If only the unicycle... if only the route... Anyway, I put on a pair of trail running shoes and walked for perhaps 3 miles carrying the unicycle and/or bag, thus compromising the purity of the entire act forever. Heu!
But once we hit the pavement I strapped the sandals back on and started running again and was subsequently pretty much unimpeachably immaculate regarding footwear morality.
It is worth mentioning that one of the most significant obstacles we encountered during this stretch was the sheer gobstopping beauty of the Greek coastline scenery, sheep speckled and idyllic in the extreme.
It was almost more difficult to force a good pace through this fairyland than through the roughest terrain.
So there we were, trotting along a windy mountain road leading to the Athenian suburbs looking like two circus freaks whose caravan had broken down. We definetly were a sight.
I was a six foot two blond American in a wife beater wearing homeless footwear and a headband which made me resemble a washed out finess guru from the eighties and Rob was a wiry kid on a unicycle who looked too young to legally buy a beer. The stares that we got from passing cars were pretty priceless.
It was lucky that we had thought to bring water with us, because there was almost none on the way and the sun was starting to gently bake us with its slow Mediterranean patience.
About that time we started emerging from the hills and found ourselves overlooking Athens proper. The lanscape around us had all been recently burned and everythong was ash and cinders. It was chokingly dry and remeniscent of Mordor or some ancient wasteland.
Coming down out of the mountains, I had one of those imprudently fun experiences which make running bearable. I grabbed the unicycle, let out a war whoop and started sprinting staight down the last hill into Athens at full tilt, jumping, sliding and yelling like a maniac. There was a Greek construction crew setting up telephone poles and doing road construction who greeted me with shouts of καλεμερα! (good morning) and σιγα! ( be careful). They were very neighborly.
Whenever I was in a more inhabited area, there were always fig and citrus trees, as well as grapevines and plums just growing by the roadside. I would often pick one and eat it while running, more for the experience than from actual hunger. The figs in particular were vasly superior to any other fig I had ever tasted in any other country, fresh or otherwise.
By this time I had reached Athens proper and was ploddding along with 10 or so miles to go before the old Olympic stadium, which was the finish line. Although the scenery was less uplifting (Greek cities tend to have a certain grunge about them) I trotted along pretty well for several miles.
About 6 miles remaining it began to become a real grind. My feet were in tons of pain and my legs were like bowstrings, but I kept plodding and after forever had worked it down to 4 miles. A lady stopped, noting my condition and asked if I needed help. I refused.
Come on... easy money... 4 miles is nothing... My brain turned off and I kept going dimly living inside my suffering body until about 2.6 miles were left.
It was at this exact spot that I arrived at what runners call "the dark place". This is a pain that is almost beyond despair and totally past hope or external emotional motivation. All systems halt and everything orders you to give up. You are officially done. No negotiating
It was no use saying that it was only 2.6 miles, I did not care. It needed to end and end soon.
I continued ludicrously trotting along, jouncing with ugly form on my heels because my muscles were too exausted and sore and took stock of my situation. Calling a taxi was difficult, weak, and expensive and would solve nothing and be eternally humiliating. Not an option. Walking was more painful than running at this point would only make the suffering last longer, as would taking a break.
The literal only escape from the agony was to run as fast as I possibly could in my current condition and finish as soon as possible. Once I was convicted of this, I started humming a rythmic tune in my head and going at a very fast, light, choppy jog trot with very small strides.
That final mile was by far the most brutal mile of my life. The muscle pain was there, the tile sidewalk was unspeakable, the sun was in on the party, and while I was at a stoplight, the cramps arrived.
I have always been notorious for cramping, I'm not sure why other than it tends to be a problem for larger guys with significant flesh and muscle mass who require lots of water to keep their muscles hydrated and functional. But I was around 208-210 lbs at the time, not exactly a mountain of meat or anything.
There was one incident I will never forget in the Grand Canyon where I tried to hike down and out in one day while it was mid July and 130 degrees at the bottom when I made the mistake stopping for 30 seconds to fill up my water bottle 1.5 miles from the top and then tried to take a step which put me on the ground screaming in pain for 15 minutes. (Yes I eventually got out, and yes it sucked.)
However this particular attack was not so severe, it was just another surprise visitor who decided to jump in on the festivities and make my experience more memorable.
Finally, I trotted into the courtyard of the stadium, snapped a photo or two in the blazing sun and celebrated by trying not to think that I still had a walk of about a mile to my hotel before the ice bath could melt all my sorrows away forever.
There were some other cool episodes from this Greece trip that I may write about later. We were sort of homeless for a couple weeks and ended up visiting Delphi, climbing Parnassus and beach camping in Ithica among other things.
Also, the adventure does not stop here. As of right now, I am assembling a full suit of hoplite armour and training with a weigted vest to run the same route again next spring in honor of the soldiers themselves. More updates to come...