Marathon
A marathon is a long-distance running event requiring exceptional endurance, typically covering a distance of 26.2 miles. It has been a staple of the Summer Olympics since their modern inception in 1896, reflecting its significance in the world of athletics. The marathon's roots can be traced back to Ancient Greece, linked to the legendary tale of Pheidippides, who is said to have run from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce victory over the Persians. This historical narrative, although debated, serves as a symbolic inspiration for modern marathons. Major marathons such as the Boston, Berlin, and London events draw participants worldwide, and the sport has seen a notable shift in competitive dominance towards East African runners, particularly from Kenya and Ethiopia. Additionally, the term "marathon" has broadened to encompass various lengthy events in media and charity contexts. With over 1,100 marathons held globally each year, the sport continues to grow, including the emergence of ultramarathons, which exceed traditional marathon distances.
Subject Terms
Marathon
A marathon is a long-distance running competition. Unlike track events, which are based on short-distance bursts of speed, marathons require their participants to exhibit outstanding endurance over a much longer period of time. The marathon has been featured at each Summer Olympics since the modern games were established in 1896, and its occurrence as the final event stands as a testament to the marathon’s status as one of the Olympic’s central competitions. Other prominent marathon events across the world include the annual Boston Marathon, the Berlin Marathon, the London Marathon, and the Polar Circle Marathon (which takes place in Greenland). Another famous marathon is run atop the Great Wall of China. Since marathons last several hours and require tremendous endurance, the term is also frequently used in reference to radio or television events that last for many hours, such as an all-night horror movie marathon or a multiple-day charity telethon.
Brief History
The origin of the marathon is thought to be Ancient Greece but has been the subject of considerable debate among historians. The first marathon is rooted in a mixture of fact and fantasy. In 490 BCE, the Persian military prepared an attack on the Greeks outside the town of Marathon, which is located approximately 25 miles from the city of Athens. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks sent a long-distance messenger named Pheidippides on a 147-mile trek to Sparta in order to solicit reinforcements. Pheidippides allegedly covered the monumental journey in just two days, but the Spartans declined to provide military assistance because they were in the midst of an important religious holiday. Pheidippides then returned to Marathon within another two days to inform his commanding officers of the news. Without reinforcements, the Athenians decided that their best chance for victory was to launch a surprise attack on the Persian army before the Persians had fully prepared. Miraculously, the sneak attack was successful, and Pheidippides was assigned the task of returning to Athens by foot to inform the city that the Persians had just been defeated. According to legend, he fatally collapsed in Athens of exhaustion, wounds sustained in battle, or both after announcing the victory to his fellow citizens.
Historians question the validity of Pheidippides’s heroic death as recounted in the legend, although the battle unquestionably took place. Some question whether Pheidippides ever existed at all. The first written account of him did not appear until five or six hundred years after his alleged death. Others have doubted whether a human could cover nearly 150 miles on foot within two days. However, a trio of British Royal Air Force personnel successfully ran such a distance within thirty-six hours in 1982, thus confirming the possibility of such an amazing feat. Other skeptics question why the Greeks would dispatch a person on foot, rather than on horseback, given the urgency of the situation.
Whether fact or legend, the modern marathon symbolically honors Pheidippides. Although the original Olympic Games were held in Ancient Greece every four years from 776 BCE until 394 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius banned the games in an attempt to terminate all non-Christian ceremonies throughout the empire. When the modern Olympics were established in 1896, the 25-mile marathon was incorporated into the games as a result of intense lobbying by French scholar Michel Bréal, who was fascinated by the story of Pheidippides. The 1896 Olympic marathon featured twenty-five runners, nine of whom were Greek. Spiridon Louis, a postal employee from Greece, won the marathon with a time of two hours, fifty-eight minutes, and fifty seconds.
The marathon as a sporting event is traditionally credited to the ancient Greeks, although in recent decades the competition has become dominated largely by East African runners, Kenyans and Ethiopians in particular. Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya set the world record for fastest marathon in 2023, when he finished the Chicago Marathon in 2:00:35. Although both men and women compete in marathons today, women were not permitted to run in marathons until the 1970s.
Marathons Today
Plans for a US-based marathon were first envisioned during the return voyage of American Olympic athletes from Greece in 1986. The Boston Marathon was first held in 1897 on April 19, in honor of Paul Revere’s historic horseback ride during the colonial period. Although the distance of Philippides’s legendary run from Marathon to Athens was 25 miles, as were the early marathons of the modern Olympics, the distance of a marathon today is 26.2 miles. The earliest instance of this distance occurred at the 1908 Olympics in London, but the exact reason for extending the length of the event remains a topic of debate. The traditional explanation held that the British royal family wanted the marathon at Windsor Castle, which added an additional 1.2 miles to the event. Others dispute this claim. In any event, the actual distance of the marathon continued to fluctuate until 1921, when it was officially set at 26.2 miles.
The 2013 Boston Marathon was rocked by a terrorist attack in which two brothers, twenty-six-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, planted homemade explosives near the event’s finish line. The explosions resulted in three deaths and more than 260 injuries at the marathon. Law enforcement killed Tamerlan during a shootout four days later, while Dzhokhar was arrested and placed on trial. A jury convicted Dzhokhar in April 2015; he was sentenced to receive the death penalty the following month. The bombing raised concerns about the potential for terrorist attacks at other sporting events in the future. Nevertheless, more than 1,100 marathons take place worldwide each year.
Ultramarathons
An ultramarathon, or ultra race, is any race longer than the traditional marathon length. There are two main types of ultramarathons: those that cover a specific distance, and those that take place over a specific period of time. In the former, the winner is the one who finishes first; in the latter, it is the one who runs the farthest in the allotted time period. The official international governing body of ultra running is the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU), which was recognized as such by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 1988.
Ultramarathons vary in distance; the most common distances are 50 kilometers (31 miles), 100 kilometers (62 miles), 50 miles (about 80 kilometers), and 100 miles (161 kilometers). Other types of ultramarathons include twenty-four-hour races, double marathons, and multiday races of 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) or more. The world's longest certified ultramarathon is the Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race, created by Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, which takes place in the Queens borough of New York every year from June to August. Initially established at 2,700 miles (4,345 kilometers) in 1996, the length of the race was increased to 3,100 miles (4,989 kilometers) in its second year.
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