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Rain ! It was raining hard when we got up on Sunday morning. Greece is a very dry country.

There was a torch lighting at the start, but we missed it. There is a close-up picture of the torch in the album.

The start was orderly and well done. I took pictures of the elites starting, and then looped back through the start.

I caught up to Jeff Galloway and the one-minute run, one-minute walk group. We made our way past the Marathon battle monument.

There were some interesting points on the early part of the course with nice views of the hills and even some wineries.

Water, “isotonic drinks”, and gels were available very frequently on the course. The water was in full bottles ! So you grabbed a bottle, took a couple of swigs and tossed it. There were firemen or medics with some sort of cooling spray, and you could get sprayed down to your heart’s content.

Crowd support was not intense, but there were a few locals cheering us on. We were in the back-of-the-pack, so some of their enthusiasm may have worn off by the time we passed.

I had the privilege of running with Jeff Galloway for quite a ways. We had a good talk about marathon running and training. At 34 kilometers I said goodbye to Jeff and began walking and waited for the Florida gang to catch up. They were only a few minutes behind.

Gold caught up with me and we did some calculations, and figured we would finish a bit after 5 hours. We were doing well and had arrived in central Athens.

The last section of the course was interesting, with the last stretch a downhill section lined with orange trees (loaded with oranges) into the 1896 Olympic stadium.

The stadium finish was really cool. There was a good crowd in the stadium cheering on the finishers. The finish amenities were as good as anything I have seen, with medals, beverages, and a bag of stuff presented to each finisher.

We met the tour group Apostolos which provided some additional stuff and took custom pictures.

They got us out of there on buses, and we got back to the hotel and collapsed.

Pictures:

Athens Marathon

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