Even though the marathon itself didn’t start until 9AM, the route in and out of the small town of Marathon would be closed starting at 6:30 and it was 45-60 minutes from Athens by bus. Add to this the fact that they wanted us there early to avoid hassles. It meant we needed to be in the lobby of the hotel by 4:30AM. This didn’t shock me so much considering I’ve gone through the Disney Marathon experience. I set a wake-up call for 3:45 and set all of my clothes out the night before. 45 minutes should be ample time to get up, get dressed, and get downstairs. Alida got to sleep in because she was just running the 5k and she’d never have to leave Athens.
The next morning my alarm went off promptly at what looked to me like 2:45. Wait, what? Apparently DST didn’t kick in for another 15 minutes. What a lousy break! Oh well, as soon as I opened my eyes, I was up and that was all there was to it. I got dressed and went downstairs and sat in the lobby with a few other non-runner tourists from Spain who were waiting for a bus to the airport. Slowly the other runners began to trickle down in various states of sleepwalk. I had on cotton tights under my race shorts and my thick Rocky Raccoon hoodie. I planned to stash these in my clothes bag to pick up after the race. As usual, I’d be running in my Dynamo shirt.
The hotel generously opened the breakfast buffet early for us and we nibbled at bits of food. I’m not a coffee drinker, so I settled for a little OJ and water. I don’t like to eat too much before a big run, so I just ate a banana and part of a muffin. Our group was made up of runners with various degrees of experience. Bette was running her 25th (and final) marathon. Mark was a Boston veteran and the odds-on favorite to finish first out of our group. Steve, Charlene, and Genevieve were running their first-ever marathons. If you count the ultras, this would be my 7th marathon. I wouldn’t say I was nervous and I certainly didn’t feel any pressure for a given finish time, but I wanted everything to go smoothly, so I wouldn’t say I was completely relaxed either.
The bus came and we all climbed onboard. This bus took us to Syntagma square directly in front of parliament. From here, we boarded one of the twenty or so busses standing by to deliver people to Marathon and the starting line. The drive was about 40 minutes and in the dark. I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight I believe it traveled the marathon route in reverse. Something neat about the Athens marathon is that there is a blue/grey line painted on the street from the start to the finish. It crosses over the road to apex all the turns. In theory, if you stay on that line, it’ll guide you on the shortest path along the course to the finish line.
We were dropped off and there was a very small crowd there. We were some of the first people at the race site. The starting area was very well-staffed. We were handed clear plastic bags to wear if we wanted to block the wind. It was chilly and with a light breeze. The weather report was for cloudless skies and it would prove to be true. More on that later. The starting area was broken into seven corrals based on predicted finish times. The elite runners were in corral 1. Mark was in 2. I was in corral 3 along with Joel and Carol, both of whom had a very similar estimated finish time to my own (my guess was 4-4.5 hours). Most of the others were in Corral 5. Power walkers were in 7 and brought up the rear. Joel said their plan was to go out at a pace to finish in 3:45:00 with the expectation that they would fade later in the race. That sounded fine to me. We walked around the area taking photos next to the marathon flame and watching as more and more people arrived and things started to fill up. Finally, we looked for a place to sit down and wait. There wasn’t much indoor waiting area and most of that was taken, so all of us ended up grabbing a piece of floor inside the women’s changing area. This was pretty strange to me, but nobody else seemed to mind.
As race time began to approach and the sun came up, I changed out of my tights and decided to ditch the hoodie. Everything went into my bag which had my race number on it, and I delivered the bag to the appropriate truck. It was a good system even though everyone (myself included) waited until the last minute so there was a big crowd near bag drop. After we sorted that out, there was nothing to do but wish each other good luck and go hang out in our corrals for the start of the race. It was fun to look at all the other international competitors there and see the event shirts from all over the world.
Eventually, 9:00 came and with great fanfare, a releasing of balloons, and lots of confetti, the runners in corral 1 were launched. Since it was a small corral, it was only a 1 minute wait for the people in corral 2 to go off. Two more minutes and it was our turn. 3…2..1.. Go!
Here’s a course profile taken from my Garmin GPS watch race report. You can see that the first six miles are relatively flat. Carol, Joel, and I ran then at roughly a 9:00/mile pace, which would put us on course for a sub-4 hour finish. I was aware there was a long uphill somewhere in the middle, but I couldn’t remember exactly where. After the hill leading up to mile 10, things stretched out before us and we could see the long climb ahead as we ran up Mt. Immitos into the ridge lining the Athens valley.
There were quite a few people running in costume, which I suppose was appropriate since it was Halloween and also a big anniversary event for the marathon itself. Do they celebrate Halloween in Greece? The race support was very good. Aid stations were every 1.5km starting at around 3km in. Every aid station had water, although strangely the water was generally in the form of bottles of water. This was all well and good and very portable, but the unfortunate result was that probably at least 50% of the water ended up on the ground or discarded along with the bottle. Nonetheless, it was a more versatile option than simply cups of water because you could run with it and sip as you wanted. There were some cups of water too, but bottles were the main container. Besides water, there were some stations that had sponges, PowerAde, PowerBar, bananas, and lots of medical staff with cans of topical analgesic (think of the spray-on stuff you use on sunburns). I never saw any portacans, but apparently there was really good coverage in that department as well.
Joel was the first to really feel the race and a little after mile 12, he said he was going to run to the halfway point (13.1 miles) and then take a walk break. This sounded good enough to the rest of us so we decided we’d all do it. This went on every now and then for the next few miles until Joel had to step off for a toilet break and told us to just keep going. We did and Carol and I kept up the run for the rest of the big uphill, which finally relented around mile 20. It was never a steep uphill, but ten miles of unbroken uphill was amazingly draining. When we got to the top, it was obvious and we could see Athens stretching out below us. By this point, we were more than three hours into the race and our pace had dropped off pretty dramatically, just as we expected it to.
The terrain was obviously taking a toll on me, but so was the weather. Even though it was in the low 60s with a cool breeze, there was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was a big drain on my energy. Aside from the water I was splashing on myself, my shirt and shorts were dry. Moisture evaporated quickly from my body. I brought four Hammer gels with me and I ate one every hour. I also grabbed a couple banana halves along the way. I could have probably done for eating a gel every 45 minutes, but I never hit the wall, so I guess my nutrition was adequate.
The last six miles were a lot of work. Running downhill beat up a different set of muscles and I felt fatigue in my knees and upper legs. There were a few smaller uphill stretches during the overall descent and Carol and I agreed to walk them. I’m pretty grateful for her pushing the pace gently like she did. I think if I had been running alone, I would have extended my walk breaks and probably finished about ten minutes slower overall as a result.
The fact that distances were marked only in kilometers was both good and bad. It was good in the sense that you got to see a marker much more frequently. It was bad because there were nearly twice as many of them! As we got under 10km from the finish, I started doing some math in my head based on our current pace and I predicted a finish time somewhere in the 4h15m-4h20m timeframe if we kept a steady pace. We passed under the inflatable archway for the start of the 10km race and then the start of the 5km race. Every kilometer felt like it took forever and when we finally hit 40km, we knew we were close.
The marathon finishes in the historic Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens. This stadium, originally built in the fourth century BC, was excavated and refurbished for the 1896 Olympics in Athens and used as the finish for the Olympic marathon course. In 2004, this stadium was again used for the finish of the marathon and it’s an incredible feeling running into the stadium with people cheering you on. The giant metal Olympics rings from the 1896 games are still standing in the back of the stadium and it’s built like a horseshoe with one end completely open. We passed the 42km mark just outside the stadium and we knew we had less than 300m to go to the end of the race. We could see the finish line.Crossing the line was a great feeling of accomplishment and I knew I was part of history. Alida had positioned herself just past the finish line and snapped us coming across. She yelled out to me to let me know where she was so that I could head back there after doing my post-race stuff.
This was my first non-flat marathon and with the exception of my 50-milers, I have never had a race beat me up this badly before. I was completely wasted at the end of the race. Walking around the track to get my medal, turn in my race chip, and get my drop bag wore me out so bad I had to take a break on the lawn before returning to the stadium to find my wife who was waiting for me. Mark did indeed finish ahead of us and he had a very good race, finishing somewhere in the 3:30 timeframe. It turns out that Carol and I crossed the line together as the second in our group to finish. Joel and Gustavo were also within ten minutes of us. As each finisher in our group came in, we’d get a finish photo of them and then flag them down to show where we were waiting. A few minutes later, they would come limping over to our area and our little group would get bigger for the next finisher to come in. We stayed this way until the last person in our group made it in at nearly six and a half hours. It just seemed right to be there to cheer each other in. Several people told me later that it meant a lot that we were there for them when they crossed the finish line. It was a very emotional experience for some of the runners—especially those who had never run a marathon before.
To top it all off, I got two really nice medals. One of them was the medal for the 28th running of the Athens Classic Marathon in the horseshoe shape of the stadium. The other was a commemorative medal signifying the 2500th anniversary of the battle of Marathon. This was it. I had been to marathon Mecca and it was a hard-earned memory I’d get to keep forever.
Official finishing time: 4:17:03 Garmin Log Here.
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