Athens 'Authentic' Marathon 2017

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This is a short video of the 35th Athens Marathon which took place on the 12th November 2017.

This was my 6th European marathon in 7 months and my last marathon of the year and what a place to end it; where the first marathon was first born - taking on the legendary route from the town of Marathon to Athens, Greece.

This year I ran in the Paris heatwave where temperatures reached 30 degrees. Stockholm where I ran after about 3 hours sleep because of flight delays and getting lost. Helsinki, during the worst storm for 10 years and coming close to getting hypothermia. Jungfrau, Switzerland which was the crazy mountain marathon where I ran uphill for 2000m in the freezing rain and had to huddle up between a bin and a crowd of people at the finish line just to retain much needed body heat. Then there was Venice, the only marathon I think which was drama-free.

The Athens marathon itself was very difficult, largely being most of the route is mainly uphill. Also, I was completely exhausted going into this one, I had a really busy week at work and it was only 3 weeks ago I had ran my previous marathon (Venice).

Furthermore, I had to be up at 4am on the Saturday morning to drive 2 hours to Stansted and then it was a 4 hour flight followed by an hour delay on the plane. Then I had to catch a 90 mins train ride to my airBnb and travel a further 40 mins to the Expo. At this point it was 6pm and I got there just before they were closing the doors. I collected my bib number and then it was a 40 mins drive again back to my airBnb which I then crashed and burned and fell asleep only to then wake up at midnight and unable to sleep for a couple of hours.

Unfortunately, I had to be up at 5:30am the next morning to get the bus to Marathon which was where the race start line was. To say I was knackered was an absolute understatement but strangely I still loved every minute of this special race. It was an amazing experience and once again I felt very lucky to be able to have an opportunity to be able to take part.

Out of the 6 marathons I’ve done this year this was definitely the hardest and I finished a whole hour slower than Venice which was 4:07hr. There is no point in killing yourself doing these things, it’s about enjoying yourself, meeting amazing new people and taking in and relishing the huge sense of achievement of completing a marathon in foreign lands.

The video was shot using the iPhone 7 at 60 fps.

The song is Sigma Ft Paloma Faith - Changing.