Anything is Possible - Running the Athens Marathon
Last November I flew to Athens, Greece to fulfill a lifelong dream. I was going to run the original marathon. An avid runner and proud Greek-American, this had been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. I’m going to be cliché here and say that no words can express the feelings I have over this experience. The emotions I felt were something that only come from completing a truly epic journey. This marathon course is not particularly pretty. There are definitely far more beautiful areas to run in Greece, but the atmosphere of this particular marathon is so raw, so organically Hellenic, you really do feel like you are running in the footsteps of Pheidippedes.
We started in the town of Marathon, Greece, where the original battle of Marathon took place in 490BC, about an hour by bus from Athens. I was on cloud 9 the entire drive because I had actually slept, and because I was given a seat next to the driver at the front of the bus I had an un-obstructed view. All of Athens lay ahead of me, and as we made the journey up to Marathon I was able to let my nerves shake out a bit. I had decided I was not going to stress what was soon to come. I wasn’t going to focus on time, I was just going to enjoy the experience and take everything in stride. My only goal was to not stop running for the entire 26.2 miles. As the bus crept closer to Marathon it travelled down several hills that only a few hours later I would be running up. When we entered the town I saw runners coming from everywhere, those that came on the buses and those walking from neighboring towns. Everyone was mingling around, eating bananas and power bars, putting on and taking off sweats and long sleeve shirts and taking photos. Laughing, smiling, hugging and stretching in the cool morning air. There were people from all over the world, Japan and Germany, Spain and Italy. I immediately felt this sense of excitement to be participating in such an international experience. This was the moment I had been waiting for since I was 15 years old running cross-country at Chugiak High School in Eagle River, Alaska where I had grown up. I was about to run my first marathon, the ORIGINAL marathon. I was about to run in the shadows of Spyridon Louis, and Stylianos Kyriakides. Me, a girl from a little town in Alaska who moved to New York City to make something of herself was about to run the famous hills of the Athens Marathon. It was then at 7am on a cloudy November morning that I felt more at peace than I had in a very long time. All the training, the nights of staying in instead of going out, the strain on my relationships, my job and my body was all about to pay off. I felt fantastic! I had slept (despite having woken up about 5 times to make sure I hadn’t slept through my alarm). I had not been drinking alcohol for 2 weeks, I had stretched constantly, my body felt great and all the jitters were slowly lifting. I was far from the comfort of my bed at the Athens Hilton 26 miles away. The only way to get back there was to run back. I was at the beginning of what I would soon discover would be an incredible journey of mental courage and physical fatigue.
I was also this feat with my brother and cousins had come to run as well, it was a family affair. That morning I bid them goodbye at their starting blocks, told them I would see them along the course and made my way to my block, block 5. At first I felt alone without my family amongst all these strangers, but then I quickly remembered I wasn’t alone at all, I had my community of runners from all over the world who came here for the same reason as I had, and I felt like I belonged to something bigger. The “Oath of Marathon” was recited, the gun sounded and we started our journey. The weather that day was about as perfect as I could have asked for. It was overcast and cloudy with the sun poking through at just the right times, accompanied by a sprinkling of occasional rain to cool us off. We couldn’t have asked for better weather. I started slow and steady; after all, I had 26.2 miles to warm up. As I jogged through the town of Marathon and then onto Nea Makri and past signs for the port of Rafina I looked around, took in the scene and smiled. To my left was the island of Evia, the island where my grandfather had been raised, and left when he was a young man to find a new life in America. An island I had visited many times. It was now only a boat ride away from where I was running at that moment. People were handing out olive branches, dancing traditional greek dances, cooking meat for gyros on the souvli (spit). They came out of their homes in their tiny villages to cheer us on. There were little kids holding out their hands for high fives. I especially looked at the little girls and noticed them smiling. Greece has always been a traditional country with fairly strict gender roles and while that is now changing, it still plays a part in everyday life and society in the country and abroad where greeks have settled. That day, only 22% of all the runners were women, and I was one of them. I looked at the little girls I ran past and smiled hoping that my thoughts could reach them, that they too could be runners, and do anything they put their minds to. I saw so much in their faces and I smiled hoping that seeing a woman running was in a way shaping their lives and changing their future.
The first 5 Km went by rather slowly. That was when I decided to stop keeping track. I remember looking down at 11km and when I looked back up I was at 16km. My body started hurting at 21km, which was the halfway point. My left knee ached, my right ankle too, and my hips were throbbing. This was the day I realized how powerful the mind really is. I had been told over and over again throughout my life that what you think, you become and lectured about the power of positive thinking. Until this day though, when I ran a marathon, I didn’t quite understand the absolute truth in that. I was constantly talking to myself, talking my way through the pain, “your knee doesn’t hurt, your ankle is fine, you’re not tired, you only have 5km to go…now only another 5km to go.” “You feel amazing!” “You are running a marathon…in Greece!” “Dad is with you and so proud of you”. It was the constant positive self-talk that carried me up those hills without stopping. My brother found me at about 31km. He came up to my right and said, “what’s up Genia”. It was so fun to see him. “How are you feeling?” I asked (remembering he hadn’t really slept much) he replied, “this is a hard one” and at that moment we both looked up and there was one of the steepest hills of the course right in front of us. I looked back at my brother and said “enough with the f***ing hills already!” We put our heads down and kept going. The Athens Marathon has been cited as the most difficult major marathon race course. Whether or not this is completely accurate, there is one fact I feel certain remains true; it has the toughest uphill climb of any major marathon. When you train for the Athens Marathon and read all of the information out there on the Internet, you hear all about the hills. There are hills for 21km (13m) in the middle of the race, but everything I read made it sound like the entire 21km distance was one steady hill. This is not the case, and I think it’s important to note this for anyone considering this marathon. It is mostly uphill that is true, but you do get a break every once in a while when it flattens out and on a rare occasion runs slightly downhill. I think it’s hard for anyone to remember accurately exactly how the course is, but I remember thinking “these aren’t as bad as I thought they would be, this is doable.” Don’t get me wrong, this marathon is no joke, and extremely challenging, but it’s certainly doable and the hills are there but you get through them, and when you get through them and finish the marathon you get to talk about “those hills” with other runners and be part of a special group who has ran the hills of the Athens Marathon. It’s pretty amazing. In fact, the night of the race and for about 2 days afterwards you see people hobbling all over Athens and you look at each other with this understanding, “you ran the marathon too eh?” “Congratulations…those hills were tough!”
Eventually the hills ended and it was pretty much down hill from there. You would think that would be a relief, but after running uphill for 13 miles it actually hurt to run down. For me it was almost more painful. I hit my wall around mile 22, but at that point I was already into the city and it was pretty much constant cheering from the crowd until the end. I took my ear buds out and just listened. I saw all sorts of signs, “you could have chosen chess” and “you run better than the government” but the one that got to me the most was a sign that read “don’t stop now”. I’m not sure why this one in particular affected me so much but I started to tear up, and it motivated me to move faster despite my exhausted body. It was at that point in the race that it was an effort to even lift my arms to high five the kids in the crowd. I put my head up and pumped my arms in order to keep my legs moving. I was almost there and I wasn’t stopping now. There is a picture in my mind that I wish I had captured on camera in real time. It was when we were running into Athens and were going downhill into a tunnel to enter the city. There was a beautiful bridge with people on it cheering and Greek flags towering overhead. I will never forget that image, it was like they were all telling me, “you are almost there, you are in Athens now, nothing can stop you, just keep going” as they waved me through the tunnel into their beautiful city.
There was one final hill towards the entrance into Athens that was pretty brutal at about mile 23. The fatigue was so heavy in my legs that I pumped my arms to keep my legs moving because I knew if I didn’t they might just stop right then and there. This was the moment I realized that if my mind didn’t keep me going, nothing would. I counted down the kilometers, and at that point I had only about 4km to go. I was almost there. I kept running and eventually I saw the runner statue outside of the Hilton Athens and I was never so happy to see the Hilton because I knew I was in the final stretch.
There is something amazing that happens at the end of a marathon, when you only have a few kilometers to run and the muscles in your body are physically shutting down. The cheer of the crowd is so loud it seems to literally pick up your weary body and carry you strongly to the finish. My body suddenly stopped hurting. The nagging pain in my left knee, the aching hips, the cramp in my right ankle, it all just stopped hurting. I am not exaggerating for affect here, when I saw the last stretch with all the people lined up knowing the stadium was merely meters in front of me, it was like for those final few minutes my body felt stronger than it ever had. I could do anything. I was about to finish my first marathon. All the hills were behind me, the rain, the hot sun…it was all in the past. With the beautiful Olympic Stadium in front of me the pain in my body literally melted away. I finished my marathon strong. I finished with pride, pride in my culture, pride in being a woman running with thousands of men, and pride in not stopping, not once.
I think the reason a marathon is so impactful is that it accurately portrays the marathon that is life. We go through endless stages of struggles and fears, ups and downs, but the only thing that is one hundred percent accurate is that the only way to get through is to never give up. You must keep going. That’s what I did that day. I didn’t stop, not once. I ran the entire 4 hours, 30 minutes and 58 seconds. It was then that I truly felt anything was possible.
“There will be days you don’t think you can run a marathon. There will be a lifetime of knowing you have”
