The JOEL Wide World - Athens Marathon

The JOEL Wide World
Athens Authentic Marathon
Athens and Marathon, Greece

I still don't purport to be a runner, per se. I know people who are runners. They're lithe and dedicated and fast and have been doing it since their cross-country days of high school. Though I wouldn't call myself a runner, most others would. I have 6 pairs of running shoes (a little low for most runners I know), I get up at 6am 3 times per week and run between 4 and 10 miles. I clock around 8:30/mile. I know what terms like Fartlek and PR and negative splits and mid-foot strike mean, and I use them knowingly. I've also run 5 marathons.

OK, so I do run. But put me next to a fleet-footed Kenyan or someone who has the "must-run" sickness, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of similarities.

Mostly I do it for the races. Mostly to prep for races I enjoy (mud runs, obstacle courses, that sort of thing). However, every once in a while, a running race challenge beckons and....why not?

I thought running through LA would be the ultimate rush...and it was. The first time. It's pretty amazing to run through a shut-down city and see it from a whole different perspective. I thought that was the apex. Then I foolishly entered the lottery for a spot in the New York Marathon. I should've bought a lottery ticket instead because, as luck (?) would have it, I got in on my first attempt. I trained for it and ran the New York Marathon and, what LA had in running-through-the-streets uniqueness and crowd support, New York out-did it by 1000%. Running through all 5 Burroughs with scores of people 10 deep for most of the course was a thrill. A brutal race, with the wind and cold and having to get up literally 7 hours before my start time to make it to Staten Island, but an amazing experience nonetheless.

I could swear I was done with Marathons.

Then I had the opportunity to run the Athens Marathon (and raise money for one of my favorite charities: AIDS Project Los Angeles). How do you say "no" to that? It's the original marathon! It's the reason we call them "marathons." The race would literally start in a stadium in, yep, Marathon, follow the course of the first Greek man who ran to Athens (and then promptly died...which we like to forget about...) and finish in the Panathenaic Stadium. Even if you hate running, hate Greek food, hate history, or all of the above, it's still a very tempting "bucket list" prospect.

As I've found with many races I've signed up for or been duped into running: It sounds way better on paper!

So I loaded up my travel backpack (I was going to spend 2 more weeks trolling around Europe in classic backpacker style), said good-bye to the wife and cats, and made my long trek to Athens.

One thing you tend to forget being American and a native English speaker and having mostly traveled around Europe, Mexico and Canada if you went to a foreign country: There are many places on this globe where English is very low on the priority list of "things to learn in school" and languages and letters of the alphabet vary greatly from our beloved 26. It hits you in Athens quickly. Though most people I came across had a working knowledge of English and some signs were bilingual, if you were in a situation where there was a language roadblock, you can't even fudge your way through. There aren't many words or letters or sounds that share the language base. You can't ask where the "toiletten" is or a "taxi" or sound out foreign-spelled words.
I know this seems very obvious, but you tend to forget about it. Especially when you're used to traveling in a bubble.

I made my way onto the the train from the airport, hit my stop at the main square near my hotel (which was arranged by APLA and my training group: Team 2 End AIDS). Immediately after I came out of the station, in front of the Parliament building, I was smack dab in the middle of a huge Syrian refugee protest. Welcome to Europe!

No one does upheaval, strikes, or unrest like they do in Europe. With such a melting pot and blurry borders and still-changing political systems, there is always some ado about something.

I kept my head down, wore my best "innocent backpacker" look and made my way to the boutique hotel a few blocks down. The bad thing about having a nice hotel booked for you, and you dressing and looking like a backpacker, and after flying 18 hours with little rest or shower, it's very hard to make your way into a fancy, small hotel during a riot and have security not try to kick you out. Twice.

Luckily my contact was there, I settled in, unpacked, and set to preparing for the big marathon.

We had a few days off before the race, so, yes, I hit the Parthenon and Theatre of Dionysus and a cool wine bar (not too much!) and the ancient Athens city. I did the tourist stuff and, unlike many places that have the classic tourist stops, I was very impressed. However, anybody can do those places. Go to Athens and it's literally unavoidable. This is about running the Authentic Athens Marathon!

A few things you should know about me personally before we get into the Marathon:
This was going to be my last marathon. Period. I never really dug them, they wreck your body, and, really, what could compete with running the OG of races?
My goal was to always do a marathon under 4 hours. The closest I've gotten was in my last LA marathon when I finished in 4:04 which, at the time, I convinced myself was "close enough."
I had trained for this, by myself, for 6 months, so I was as ready as I thought I'd be.

My wave time was 8am. Which meant that we had to catch a 5am bus from our hotel. It was only an hour or so outside of Athens by bus. This is always the toughest part of the marathon because you want to sleep on the ride, but you're already mostly awake, so you're really balancing tired and getting psyched for a race that's starting in 3 hours. It is a balancing act.

Also, probably the hardest part of the marathon, aside from not dying at the end, is the hours before-hand. Whether is 3 hours (pretty standard) or the 5 hours in NY, it's just time to kill. You want to eat, but can't eat too much, but have to eat something. And you want to stay loose and warm but not too loose and warm, but you don't want to be cold. And you are excited, but not super-excited, almost dreading it really, but you must stay excited and positive. And you'll go to the bathroom around 7 times, but you have to stay hydrated, almost overly hydrated, but not overly hydrated, and you want to make sure you go to the bathroom (I went to the bathroom on my first marathon in LA about halfway through the course and seriously contemplated just staying there for an hour to rest up). So there are all of these factors that happen immediately before the race that really will determine your success on the course. This is the part you hear so little about, but it should be in everyone's race training: How to kill 3 hours productively before the starting gun.

Now, a word about Marathon. We didn't get a tour of the whole city, or maybe we did. We were dropped off in a "stadium," and I use that term loosely, to get settled in before the race. I don't know if maybe Marathon itself was ever a bigger city or maybe it was just famous as the namesake of this particular style of race. Either way, if you happened onto any Greek high school soccer field, you could easily mistake it for the stadium in Marathon. It was so bland and small and un-Ancient Greek-like. I suppose my team (we were 10 in all) was all a bit disappointed. This was supposed to be the home of the marathon. It's called Marathon! I mean, there was a lit torch and a bit of a grand-stand and some marble seating but nothing that would make you think this was the epicenter of the long-distance race world.

Didn't matter, I told myself. We're just running from one small stadium to a huge one. Maybe that's why everybody runs from Marathon: There's not much too it. So a word to the wise: When in Greece, see Athens, see some famous ruins, see the Islands, don't go out of your way to visit Marathon.

This isn't to be ungrateful. Beginning a marathon in Marathon was still awesome. The rest of the race? Well.....

It was only after the course did I read an article stating that the Athens Marathon was one of the Top 10 Toughest Marathons in the World. Now there are others that run through Death Valley or across the Arctic or up to Macchu Pichu that also made the list, so this race was not in bad company. There are a few reasons that became readily apparent why this race would even be considered for such a high honor:

-- It was 75% uphill. In fact, it was the first 75% that was uphill. Most races will have ups and downs and you can always take solace in the fact that for every up, there is always a down. Except in Greece. We started up. And continued up. And up. And up. It was only the last 10 kilometers where there was any sort of down, and that was a very negligible down.

-- This may be due to the weak Greek economy, but support on the track was pretty slim. It was there. Enough to make sure nobody died on the course. However, that seemed to be the extent of it. Where most races will have water stops every mile and spectators handing out food and drink in the intervening gaps, Greece had water stops every 2.5 - 3 kilometers. As far as the spectators go, they were way more apt to offer "Bravo" then open up their cupboards and faucets to a bunch of casual runners.

-- The spectators. Look, the few that showed up were very nice. Yet as much as each thought their cheers of "Bravo!" would satiate an international crowd, when that becomes, quite literally, the only thing you hear on the race course, it can get maddening. Also, a few folks were probably pretty happy to have a race going through their neighborhoods, but it seemed like most did not. Or perhaps Athens and it's outskirts just aren't that heavily populated. There was plenty of alone-time.

-- When you hear about, then sign up for, the Athens Authentic Marathon, how do you not envision the Mediterranean in the distance, that wonderful sea breeze which bred and kept civilization in this area, and scores and scores of ruins and statues and history? I thought we'd be running through a Greek brochure. I was surprised to find out that, after Marathon and it's high school stadium, the course to Athens was very urban. Asphalt and buildings and asphalt and buildings and signs and some cars and some people and - wait! Is that a statue? Yes! - and one statue. It was more like running through a brochure of urban planning than a Greek paradise.

-- Here's the tricky thing: The finish line is actually 1 km in front of the "finish line" in the Panathenaic Stadium! Maybe they had to make up a distance, or they laid it all out and said the Greek equivalent of "Oops!" Or maybe there's some European reason unbeknownst to me. I remember running over the real finish line, not yet in the stadium, and thinking: "I think I just finished. But I think I still have to run." And so I did. To the other Finish Line. The only problem was: That last 1 km is where you dig deep, kick in whatever juice you have left, and try to trim seconds off of your time.

Now, once again, I am not ungrateful at all. Finishing a marathon in a humongous marble Greek stadium that's been there for thousands of years is epic! There were boisterous cheers for the runners and, though most were probably not for me, you imagined they were. It's an incredible feeling! You run in and finish 1/4 lap in. Then you get your medal and do the slow post-marathon amble the rest of the way completing a lap in an Ancient Greek stadium!

So though the previous 4-plus hours might have been dull or unfulfilling or, well, I'll call it like it is which sums up my thoughts on marathons, a physical Hell, the finish is worth the flight, the refugee riot, the training, the money, the stress, the hills - all of it! It didn't really even faze me that I finished in 4:06.

Yep, missed my personal goal by 6 minutes. At least, that's what the "finish line" said.

It was only later that I got an email from my brother. I was at the hotel, trying not to move from the lobby chair to go get some much-needed food and drink, when I checked my email. A huge "CONGRATS" from my brother. He told me I had broken 4 hours. What?

I went to the official timing site and there it was: 3 different listed times. Your halfway point time. Your official finish time. And the time you finished in the stadium.

I finished in 3:59:45. Only 15 seconds under 4 hours. But that was good enough for me to set the sun on the marathon career....

Next time I'm in Greece: I'm going to the Islands!