Marathon

Rundowon

The marathon is a long-farness foot race with an official farness of 42.195 km [26 miles and 385 yards], that is usually run as a road race. The event was set up in withremember of the taled run of the Greek soldier Pheidippides, a herald from the battle of Marathon [the namesake of the race] to Athens. The yoreloreish sharprightness of this legend is in doubt, gainsaid by tellings given by Herodutus. The marathon was one of the firstlingish todaysome Olympic events in 1896, though the farness was not set in stone until 1921. More than 800 bigsome marathons are run throughout the world each year with the mostness of take-parters being your everyday folk athletes. Bigger marathons can have tens of thousands of take-parters.

Yorelore

The name marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek herald. The legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to forthsay that the Persians had been netherthrown in the battle of Marathon [in which he had just fought], which took place in August or September, 490 BC. It is said that he ran the whole farness without stopping and burst into the folkgathering, shouting out “we have one," before falling to the ground and dying. The telling of the run from Marathon to Athens first shows up in Plutarch’s On the glory of Athens in the first century A.D. which quotes from Heraclides Ponticus’s lost work, giving the runners name is either Thersipus of Erchius or Eucles. Lucian of Samosata [second century A.D.] also gives the story that names the runner Phiippedes [not Pheidippes].  There is fightling over the yorelorish sharprightness of this legend. The Greek yorelorian Herodotus, as the main outspring for the Greco Persian wars, bysays a herald who ran from Athens to Sparta asking for help, and then ran back, a farness over 240 km each way. In some Herodotus manuscripts the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta is given as Philippeds. Herodotus makes no bysay of a herald sent from Marathon to Athens, and writes that the main part of the Athenian army, having already fought and won the grueling battle, and fearing a boat raid by the Persian fleet against an unshielded Athens, marched quickly back from the battle to Athens arriving the same day. In 1876 Robert Browning wrote the poem “Pheidippides.” His poem, became part of late popular culture and was accepted as a yorelorish legend.