Running 26.2 miles is an absurdity born from an ancient Greek legend, which became the challenge that tells the story of our stubborn resistance better than any other.
- The marathon originated from the **legend of Pheidippides**, who in 490 B.C. ran from Marathon to Athens to announce a victory, dying immediately afterward.
- It was introduced as an official race in the **first modern Olympics in 1896** in Athens, suggested by the philologist Michel Bréal.
- The distance was not standardized right away: the **26.2 miles (42.195 km)** were fixed only at the London 1908 Olympics so the race could start at Windsor Castle.
- For decades, women were excluded; the battle for participation was symbolized by **Kathrine Switzer’s** run in Boston in 1967.
- Since the 1970s, the marathon has become a **mass phenomenon** thanks to the rise of the great city races, the “Majors.”
- In 2019, **Eliud Kipchoge** broke the two-hour barrier, an accomplishment that redefined the limits of human endurance, although not in an official race.
When you think about it, the whole thing is quite absurd. The idea of running 42 kilometers and 195 meters (26.2 miles), of pushing the body to a breaking point that most sane people would avoid like the plague, rests its foundation on a story that probably never happened. Or at least, not exactly that way. And yet, here we are, celebrating this distance as if it were a religion, a secular rite of passage for anyone who discovers the perverse pleasure of putting one foot in front of the other for an indefinite amount of time.
The marathon, before being a race, is a narrative. And like all great narratives, it needs a hero—preferably a tragic one.
26.2 Miles (42.195 Meters): A Distance Born from a Legend
Our hero is named Pheidippides (or Phidippides, depending on which source your high school professor preferred). The year is 490 B.C., and the Athenians have just repelled the Persian invasion on the plain of Marathon. An unexpected victory, a turning point. A messenger was needed to carry the good news to Athens before the city surrendered to panic. Pheidippides, a professional *hemerodromos*—a sort of ancient express courier, but without a van and with calves of steel—took on the mission. He ran for about 40 kilometers (25 miles), arrived breathless, uttered the phrase “Νενικήκαμεν” (“We have won”), and, as in any respectable dramatic finale, collapsed to the ground. Dead.
A perfect story, right? Too bad the historian Herodotus, the most meticulous in recounting the Persian Wars, makes no mention of it. He talks about a Pheidippides who ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for help, covering 240 km (150 miles) in two days. The “Marathon-to-Athens-collapse” version surfaced centuries later with Plutarch. But it hardly matters. The myth was too powerful to ignore.
1896: How the Marathon Became the Signature Olympic Race
Fast forward about 2,386 years. Athens, 1896. Pierre de Coubertin is setting up the first modern Olympics. A friend of his, the philologist Michel Bréal, pitched him an idea: why not commemorate Pheidippides’ feat with a running race over the same distance? The idea caught on. And so, the marathon became the concluding and most anticipated event of those first Games. Winning it, almost as if scripted, was a Greek water carrier named Spiridon Louis, who became a national hero. The distance, however, was not yet the one we know. For its standardization, we have to thank the British royals who, at the 1908 London Olympics, requested that the race start from the lawn of Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal box in the stadium. Total distance? 26 miles and 385 yards. Or, 42 kilometers and 195 meters. A measure born by chance, which became ironclad law.
The Pioneers: Women’s Long Road to Conquering the Marathon
For a long time, this absurdity was considered an exclusively male affair. It was believed that the female body was not “suited” to withstand such an effort. A conviction as deeply rooted as it was, obviously, idiotic. It took courageous women to dismantle it. The most famous is **Kathrine Switzer**, who registered for the 1967 Boston Marathon using only her initials, K.V. Switzer. When one of the organizers, Jock Semple, realized the deception and tried to rip her bib off, the photos of that aggression went global, becoming a symbol of the battle. She was not the first woman to run a marathon—in fact, she was preceded in Boston by Roberta Gibb, who hid her identity—but her determination paved the way. The women’s marathon only became an Olympic discipline in 1984. An entire geological era later.
The Era of the “Majors”: How the Marathon Invaded the World’s Streets
Something new happened in the 1970s. Running, from a sport for a few elite athletes, became a mass phenomenon. The so-called American “running boom” transformed the marathon into a popular event. The great city races were born, the “**World Marathon Majors**”: New York, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, London, and Tokyo. Suddenly, the streets of metropolises would close for a day to be flooded by rivers of ordinary people, united by the same insane goal: to finish those 26.2 miles. **The marathon was no longer just a race; it was a collective celebration, a transformative experience.**
Under Two Hours: Eliud Kipchoge’s Feat That Redefined the Impossible
And then we arrived in the era of science, technology, and limits that seem specifically designed to be broken. For years, running a marathon in under two hours was considered the Everest of athletics, an insurmountable wall. Until October 12, 2019. That day, in Vienna, the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge stopped the clock at 1:59:40. Granted, it was not an official record: the event, the “INEOS 1:59 Challenge” project, had been custom-built for the feat, with alternating pacemakers and perfect conditions. But it doesn’t matter. Kipchoge showed us it could be done. That the impossible was, in reality, just a little further than the possible.
From a breathless Greek messenger to an athlete flying across the asphalt, the story of the marathon is our story. It is the story of how we transformed an ancient legend into a metaphor for life: a long, grueling, and sometimes agonizing run where, in the end, the only thing that truly matters is not stopping.