As most students of antiquity know, the modern marathon takes its name from the name of a famous battle that the Athenians won over the Persians in 490 B.C. Pheidippides, a Greek soldier and champion runner, volunteered to run the 25 miles from Marathon to Athens to spread the news of the victory. Upon arriving, Pheidippides is reported to have gasped “Rejoice, we conquer!” and then promptly died on the spot.
Obviously, those Greeks may have known a thing or two about drama, sculpture and shellacking Persians but they weren’t too impressive at long-distance running. Even more surprising is that, given such a deadly precedent, it is pretty odd that marathon running, instead of being used as a form of capital punishment, has instead become one of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing sports.
How many people are we talking about? According to a report by the USATF Road Running Information Center, in 2004 there were over 423,000 finishers in the U.S. marathons alone, up from a mere 25,000 in 1976. Around the world, the number of marathon participants swells considerably.
The popularity of running in general and marathons in particular have also been good to athletic-equipment makers. For example, Oregon-based
What is also interesting is that for many marathoners running a simple vanilla 26 miles, 285 yard race–more than enough for most people–isn’t challenging or stimulating enough. These hard-core masochists demand a little extra frisson. To get it, they go off in search of races that will test them even more, such as a race across a desert or a polar ice cap. Marathons are also no longer just the standard Olympic length either: Ultra-marathoning, for example, in which contestants will run more than 100 miles at a stretch, is one of the fastest-growing segments of the sport.
Fortunately, unlike Pheidippides, the survival rate of modern ‘thoners is pretty good. According to a 1997 study in the British Medical Journal, there were only two sudden deaths from myocardial infarction (heart attack) in the 14 London marathons up to and including 1993.
So, whether you are interested in learning about some of the more unusual marathons or simply are fascinated by the crazy things that humans will submit their minds and bodies to, please click here to find out more about the world’s most extreme marathons.