Athens in 2013

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Celebrating my 50 in style!

This year I was going to celebrate my 50th birthday, so I wanted to do something special for the occasion. How about running the original marathon, the one that gave birth to all others? A pretty good idea, isn't it? So, off to Greece we go!


A little bit of history

"The marathon course is based on the myth from which the race gained its name: Pheidippides, a messenger in Ancient Greece, ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greeks' victory over the Persians." (Wikipedia article on the Athens Marathon)


Sightseeing before the race

My wife and I arrived in Greece ten days before the race and spent our time there sightseeing. This was our third time in Greece, so we kind of know the place by now... ;-)

We went to see the Parthenon, of course:

We did a cruise by boat:

I went to Delphi to ask the oracle there for a safe race... ;-):

Days before the race I visited the Panathnaiko stadium, where the race would end:

We visited the temple of Poseidon on Cap-Sounion, a very windy place:

We went to Meteora in the north of the country to see the incredible monasteries that had been built there:

Expo

On Friday, November 8th (my birthday) we went to the Marathon Expo to pick up my bib and other things. Here I am at the entrance of the sports arena where the event took place:

And here is a view of the Expo from the top:

Race day

My wife was not allowed to go to the start line with me, so she took a picture of me just before I left:

I took a camera with me, because the organizers said that this is a very picturesque marathon. Here is the starting line half an hour before the beginning of the race:

There was a ton of people (11,000, I've been told):

Off we go!

The start is done in seven blocks or waves. I was in block 7, the last and slowest one. The elite started at 9 am, I went through the start line at 9h21.

Here is a picture of my "block" shortly after the start:

We go around the tomb of the Athenian warriors:

On the way there were locals dancing the Greek national dance:

And here, a sculpture of Pheidippides:

Brian

I was part of a group organized by the Apostolos Greek Tours. In this group I met Brian, who was doing his first marathon ever. We both started in block 7, but I was faster than him at the beginning, so we didn't see each other for more than twenty kilometers.

During the first half of the race he was running with Jake, another runner from the Apostolos group. Here are they, going uphill (in this picture they are numbers 11617 and 11625):

Jake could not keep up, he had to let Brian go solo around the halfway mark. So Brian and I met again a little before km 25. Seeing that we were both struggling, we decided to do the rest of the race together to give support to each other.

The last ten kilometers were just murderous, the course is really difficult. If you see the course profile you will notice that there is a hill that begins right after km 18 and goes all the way past km 32! Even though the last ten kilometers are downhill, you're so spent from running uphill all the time that you can't even take advantage of the downhill after it...

Anyway, we did the last seventeen kilometers together and we finished it together. Here are we just before crossing the line:

And right after:

After race

I met my wife after the race, when I had already my medal and my isothermal blanket:

Showing off my medal and laurel wreath:

 Again with Brian:

 And with other participants from our group:

 Here a close-up of the medal:

And finally, here are my time and splits:

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