Running the Authentic Athens Greece Marathon

Athens Greece has what they call the authentic Athens marathon. This is THE marathon. The place where marathons came about to commemorate the fabled run of the Greek soldier Pheidippides, a messenger from the Battle of Marathon to Athens, who reported the victory and then died.





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If you're going to do a marathon, might as well do THE original marathon, right? The race begins in the city of Marathon. You then run through the hills to the city center of Athens. They even have medal plaques ingrained along the course at every kilometer along the road to Athens. It's really cool actually.

I caught the 5:30am bus that shuttled us from Athens up to Marathon. It was a really chilly morning, so waiting for the race to start was not so fun in my shorts. The race didn't start until 9am. With over 15,000 runners from all over the world it was a lot of people. With all those elite athletes, there were some very attractive men from around the world. While I didn't enjoy shivering in the morning cold, I did enjoy watching some very nicely chiseled men stretch and warm up. I'm human too. And I absolutely appreciate a good looking man.

Pre- race selfi

This is the best organized race I have ever done. With so many people, they have you line up according to your finish time. This means the fast, elite runners are at the very front so they can get out of the shoot first and fly through the course. They had lots of portable bathrooms set up, a baggage check station, water, hot coffee, music playing, it was a great atmosphere to get everyone excited and ready to go.

I'm a slow runner, so I was in the last group to start the race. The marathon started at 9am. I got to the starting line at 9:45am. The thought crossed my mind that some people were already at the halfway point of the marathon while I was just starting it. A bit of a depressing thought really.

The start of a race is always hard. You're in this massive clump of bodies, so you're pace is stunted until the crowd thins out a bit and you can move at whatever your pace is. I really wanted to finish this race in under 6 hours. That was my goal.

The course was quite pretty, with the sea on one side of the road you're running on. There were locals all along the course cheering and encouraging all the runners along. Water stations were every two miles, medic stations were about every 2 miles as well, but staggered from the water stations. Some stations had crackers, bananas, chocolates, lots of treats to help us runners get the calories we needed.

As part of this race, they wanted to honor that part of Greece that was devastated from severe fires last summer. That part was along the marathon course. They gave every runner a green bandana scarf and asked them to wear it when you got to that part of the race. It was quite sad to see the blackened hills, and locals were there dressed in black as well.

I knew this race was going to be challenging with lots of hills. What I didn't realize was that the first 20 miles was mostly an incline. There were a few spots were it would flatten out a little, or you'd get a little down hill section. But it seemed for the most part it was all uphill. Wasn't expecting that.

I pushed myself as hard as I could through those hills. About mile 14, I started feeling really dizzy. I figured I probably just hadn't eaten enough calories and need some food. So I ate a few of my running rations hoping that would help.

Then mile 16 I still felt really dizzy, and I really wanted to throw up. The thought kept crossing my mind every time I saw a medic that I wanted to throw up and lay down. I've never felt like this during a marathon before and I wasn't sure what was happening.

I drank lots of water at every station and grabbed food and bananas whenever I could, hoping that would help me feel better. Now, every athlete knows that you hydrate for a race in the days leading up to it, not the day of. While I had tried to stay on top of drinking water and resting my body, I knew I hadn't drunken enough. But it didn't dawn on me that I could possible be dehydrated. I just kept moving forward.

Mile 20 I had my usual mental breakdown - why am i doing this? what was I thinking? I hate this? I want to be done, I'm never doing this again, etc. etc. This is also the point where the incline stopped. Because my muscles had gotten so used to going up hill, they didn't want to bend to adjust to going downhill. I was painfully stiff.


Mile 23. I was so ready to be done

But I kept moving. I had another little meltdown at mile 23 but forced myself to walk through it. Mile 24 is tough for me. I'm so close to being done, but it's still an eternity away and time stands still. What feels like 2 hours of walking is only about 5 minutes. I get really impatient, my body is crazy stiff and sore, and I just need this whole thing to be over.

Then you have people at mile 25.5 saying how close you are and don't stop and you're almost there.

And I want to slap them or flip them off. For them less than a mile is not far. After 25 another mile is an eternity in every way.

Finally I made it to the finish line and got my medal. It took me 6hours and 15 minutes. Not what I wanted, but considering the hills not horrible either. The time limit on the course was 8 hours.

I went back to my hotel, showered, then went and ate with my friends who had come along with me to cheer me on. I was so stiff and sore walking post shower. Bending and moving takes a lot of effort.

I also discovered that my urine was a wine red color. That's never happened to me before, so I was concerned. Turns out I was severely dehydrated. Which explained why I felt so incredibly off during the entire race. Luckily it cleared up, I drank lots of liquids, and gave myself some extra time to recover in the weeks post race.

Of course I'm glad I finished this race. I would never regret that. It's a challenging, amazing, iconic course that I think every marathon runner should do. It's well organized, well taken care of, and lots of cheerleaders along the course which is always wonderful.

I didn't have any emotional epiphanies or life changing experiences, other than I got to participate in a pretty amazing and special thing. Hopefully my next marathon won't quite take me 6 hours. That's my goal.