The Road to Sparta

by Dean Karnazes

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  1 Along the course are 75 aid stations, or checkpoints, provisioned with food, liquids, and other refreshments. Certain checkpoints served as drop stations for athlete’s kits that had been left at prerace registration the day prior to the event and which were delivered to specified locations on the course.

  Drizzly walk to Spartathlon start with Dimitris Troupis (top), Start of Spartathlon (bottom)

  20

  IT’S IN THE AIR

  As historical records show, when word arrived in Athens about the Persian incursion at Marathon, the Athenian generals wasted no time in summoning their greatest herald. Recruiting the Spartans into battle was of critical importance, and the sooner they could arrive, the better. Speed was of the essence, and Pheidippides was the right man for the job.

  His departure from Athens would have been quite a different scene from our modern-day exit. With little fanfare, except perhaps some encouragement from a few fellow hemerodromoi and the leaders of Athens, his send-off was likely a somber affair. Pheidippides was tasked with a momentous undertaking, the outcome of which was quite uncertain. Yet the future of Greece depended on his success. The stakes were high, mortally high, thus it was hardly an occasion for revelry.

  He likely would have left earlier in the morning than we had, owing to the fact that the days were longer in early August, when he made his heroic run, than they were roughly 7 weeks (and 2,504 years) later, in the last weekend of September, when we attempted ours. Longer days meant more sunlight, but also more heat. Leaving under the coolness of dawn would provide some reprieve from the oppressive heat, at least for a short while. Greece in the summertime was inevitably hot, and it was impossible to completely avoid the intense midday solar radiation. The more miles he could accumulate in the early morning hours, the better. Money in the bank, as ultrarunners say nowadays.

  Pheidippides would have been under intense pressure to perform at his aristeia (bestness). He knew that every wasted step meant the invading Persians would be able to further fortify their position at Marathon and build their strength. While we Spartathletes had artificial cutoff times to reach certain milestones along the course, Pheidippides’s time constraints were very real. The consequences of his failure were unthinkable. The young boys of Athens would be castrated and made into servants, the women raped and enslaved. Older men would be seen as offering little value and would be disposed of without hesitation. Any surviving Athenian hoplites would be slaughtered wholesale, and all the treasures of architecture, art, and science would be looted or destroyed. Worse, the Greek system of democracy would be lost forever to a tyrant who ruled men not by consensus and collective accord, but through fear and intimidation. Darius had little sympathy for the Greeks. He wanted complete and total revenge for their defiance. Fools they were for not surrendering to him immediately, and now they would pay dearly. No mercy would be shown. Persian victory would spell the end to everything the Greeks had worked so diligently to construct. Pheidippides was well aware of all of this. He knew he mustn’t fail.

  I didn’t think much about Pheidippides during those initial miles of the Spartathlon. I couldn’t, really. There was too much to watch out for, too many distractions and potential hazards. I needed to direct the entirety of my attention toward avoiding the many perils and pitfalls that running down congested city streets presents. But as the miles progressed and the chaotic traffic of Athens faded away, my thoughts again returned to this mighty hemerodromos.

  Knowing intimately the situation and the consequences of his actions, what must have been going through his head? Imagine rushing home to save your family from an oncoming hurricane. There would be few extraneous thoughts passing through your mind other than reaching them as quickly as possible. Your heart would be racing, adrenaline flooding through your system; the pituitary would release cortisol, inducing the so-called fight-or-flight response. The mind would be stimulated and intensely focused, constantly analyzing and processing every split second of motion. All of these physiological reactions evolved as a survival mechanism to ready the body for immediate action against clear and present threats. This is how our bodies rise to the occasion when confronted with an urgent, life-threatening matter, giving us a burst of quick energy that enables us to put up a fight.

  But such would be a heavy burden to carry for 153 miles of continuous running. Pheidippides knew the ensuing storm was brewing, but being supreme commander of his body, he was also grand master of his mind. Learning to quell anxiety and to channel this emotional electricity into long-term storage for steady release over a prolonged period of time is an essential skill for any endurance athlete, and Pheidippides is the father of us all. Who knows? He may have had a family of his own, children, and a loving partner. Certainly he had parents who could have been alive and living in Athens, as well as brothers and sisters. Thoughts of the Persian military laying their filthy hands on his family could paralyze a man with anger. But such unchecked emotional discord would have been demoralizing and counterproductive to the fulfillment of his mission. Pheidippides must have repressed such thoughts and remained focused on the task at hand. As I’ve witnessed in myself and other ultramarathoners, we tend to be a hopeful and optimistic lot. Rather than fixating on the consequences of failure, we project forward and concentrate on the elation that will ensue as a result of accomplishing our goal. Pheidippides must have harbored the belief that if he were to succeed in his conquest, all would be good. The Persians would be defeated and driven out of Greece, and his family and all of Athens would be saved. Such positive self-talk would serve to reinforce his determination and unwavering resolve to reach Sparta as quickly as he could.

  We had made a rather long and gradual climb across the shoulder of Mount Aigaleo and then dropped down through a wooded area and on into Skaramangas, along the coastline. The route we followed was the Sacred Way, a path the ancients used to travel to the verdant agricultural district of Elefsina, and farther to Delphi. Although just 10 miles into the race, the once-concentrated pack of runners had thinned considerably, most running individually or in pairs.

  American ultrarunning champion Jon Olsen came running past. He looked strong and composed, as usual, but it was still very early on in a very long race, and most runners looked relatively fresh. We chatted for a bit, and I noticed that his feet looked wet, which called to my attention, for the first time since trying to dodge puddles earlier in the morning, that my feet were wet, too. Jon bid me farewell and bolted off into the distance at a pace that was too aggressive for me to sustain. Sure, I could have locked strides with him, though so could have anyone else at such an early point in the race. Maintaining a faster pace was something well within the ability of every runner in the field. The question was, what toll would maintaining such a hastened pace at this initial stage extract during the later phases of the race? Jon was a seasoned professional, and this was hardly his first rodeo. Although it was his inaugural attempt at the Spartathlon, he was an expert at pacing himself for long durations, as he had skillfully done on many such previous occasions, winning races and setting records in the process. You don’t accomplish these things without a complete mastery of body and mind. I wished him luck and settled back into my comfortable cadence, taking the opportunity to inspect my feet.

  I’d chosen to wear white knee-high compression socks from the start. At least I thought they were white. When I looked down at them, I saw only a saturated oily muddle of sagging gray fabric spackled liberally with gritty particles of loose road debris. The runoff we’d trodden through along the byways of Athens had been a grimy cesspit of drippings from the undercarriages of a thousand poorly maintained and rusting vehicles. The puddles and small streams were a veritable rivulet of greasy mechanical pollutants, and my shoes and socks were soaked in it. I’d need to change them, but the earliest opportunity wouldn’t come for another 12 miles, at the 26-mile mark, when I would see my crew. So I continued running.

  The road along the coastline was pr
etty in places and grossly industrialized in others. With the cobalt Mediterranean glistening beside us as a backdrop, we ran past aging shipyards, crumbling barracks with massive lots of broken and parched concrete, gigantic corroding rebar matrixes openly exposed like the skeletal corpses of rotting leviathans. Urban decay was rampant all around us. Now an apocalyptic wasteland, 30 years earlier the area had been a highly productive center of manufacturing and commerce. Forgotten and past its prime, the region was abandoned and left to decompose. The Greeks weren’t always so good at cleaning up their own messes.

  Although slightly thinning now, a layer of clouds still blotted out the sun. I’d experienced clouds in Greece before, but these clouds were different. The summertime clouds I’d encountered were towering cumulonimbus formations created by the earth’s radiating warmth. As these clouds developed and mushroomed outward, they would sometimes release intense downpours. But this rain was always localized and transient, soaking the ground for an instant and then vaporizing into the heavens, the clouds disappearing as quickly as they’d formed. The clouds on this day were more of a low-lying blanket that stretched from one horizon to the other. This type of cloud coverage can be a double-edged sword. While it affords some level of protection from direct rays of sunlight, it also causes temperatures at ground level to elevate. This may sound counterintuitive, but as the warmed air near the earth’s surface rises, this smothering layer of cloud coverage creates a barrier which prevents the heated ground air from escaping upward, thus trapping it down low. Not only does this greenhouse effect elevate surface temperatures, it also raises humidity levels. Humidity is a runner’s enemy, because it renders our body’s normal system of evaporative cooling less effective. In drier conditions, perspiration on the skin’s surface evaporates quickly, which serves to cool the body. As humidity rises, the sweat we produce doesn’t evaporate. Instead, it sticks to the skin’s surface and accumulates into a salty crust, which only exacerbates the situation and raises the body’s internal thermometer even further. I’d take higher temperatures over higher humidity any day, as would most runners.

  I soon encountered another downside to this extensive low-lying cloud coverage. There were a series of refineries and tanker docks near the roadway, and they were all billowing thick, foul-smelling fumes into the air. These noxious vapors were being trapped down low by the cloud coverage, and since there was no way to avoid breathing in this tainted air, I was left feeling queasy and light-headed. I wasn’t the only one affected by it, either. I spotted another runner vomiting near the roadside. The guttural sounds of his retching made me feel as though I might do the same. Who knew what kinds of toxins and pollutants were being spewed out of those smokestacks? There was no way around this caustic fog, no alternate path to follow, so we runners had no choice but to inhale the unwholesome discharge.

  Running through the putrid murk rekindled a memory of a high school surf trip I’d once taken to Baja with some buddies. As we were driving down a remote dirt road, our truck had struck a concealed boulder, severing the vehicle’s gas line. Using some mechanical tape, we were able to construct a makeshift patch, but not before the gas tank had been drained of its contents. Thankfully, we’d brought a spare gas can that we’d filled prior to leaving, as the guidebooks advised us to do. But there was no nozzle on this can and thus no way to get the gasoline into the vehicle. We did, however, have some spare plastic tubing, so my buddy decided he would siphon the gas from the can into the truck by inserting one end of the tube into the opening of the gas can and then sucking on the other end to start the flow of gas moving upward. Once the flow started, he’d simply insert the tube into the truck’s tank and the contents of the can would be transferred. He tried several times to no avail. The liquid that he’d sucked upward didn’t sustain enough momentum to initiate an ongoing stream and quickly receded back into the gas can once he pulled his mouth off the tube. On his next attempt he drew in even deeper to ensure success. But he didn’t manage to remove his lips from the tube in time and accidentally inhaled a mouthful of gasoline. Almost immediately he violently discharged the contents of his bowels and collapsed on the ground, convulsing and heaving spasmodically in the dirt. None of us knew what to do. He was flipping and flopping on the ground like a gaffed fish, violently dry heaving, his face hideously reddened, mouth wide open with his tongue dangling outward, a viscous purple-black sputum dripping off his chin like ink from a squid. We stood there watching in utter horror, completely unprepared to deal with the situation. Our festive surf trip at once had become a horrible nightmare. We didn’t know if he’d live.

  Fortunately, we were rescued by some local fishermen who happened to pass and told us to rush him home immediately. There were no hospitals deep in Baja at the time, and only one paved road. It was a long, sleepless drive back to Southern California, and even with all the windows rolled down, the vehicle reeked of vomit, feces, and gasoline the entire way. Our friend spent several days in the hospital but eventually recovered. That deathly smell, however, lingered in my nostrils for months. I hadn’t thought about this experience in years, but the stench of those refineries along the Greek roadside reawakened the disagreeable memory.

  Earlier in the day, I’d eaten a couple of figs, a handful of olives, and a mouthful of pasteli. I’d grabbed a few glasses of water from volunteer-staffed checkpoints along the way, but that was all I’d consumed thus far. My hunger had been mounting prior to reaching the refineries, but now my appetite was entirely gone. After breathing in that nauseating effluence, I couldn’t eat. As we came running into Megara, at mile 26, all I could think about was changing my socks.

  Megara marked the first crew access point along the course, and it couldn’t have come soon enough. The growing warmth of the asphalt underfoot was becoming problematic, and my feet were at risk of blistering if I didn’t change into dry socks. My crew had driven from the starting line and would be meeting me here, so now was the opportunity to change into a fresh pair.

  Flanked by Mount Pateras, Megara is home to many ancient landmarks, including the temple of Artemis, which contained the statues of the 12 gods of Olympus, the gold-plated statue of the goddess Athena, and a consecrated temple to the god of gods, Zeus. It seemed tragic that all these treasured ruins were within spitting distance of a row of hideous oil refineries, but I would try to forget that reality and relax in Megara for a moment and think happy thoughts while I changed my socks.

  Only 127 more miles to go.

  21

  ENCOUNTERS OF THE ULTRA KIND

  Megara was hardly the quaint seaside enclave I’d expected, at least not when the Spartathlon was passing through town. Instead it was a bewildering suburban maze replete with gridlocked traffic, honking horns, crews frantically jockeying for parking places, and pissed-off locals cursing at the unruly interlopers who had invaded their otherwise peaceful community. Everyone seemed to be yelling or arguing with someone else, gesticulating wildly with their hands and overemphasizing the direness of the situation with exaggerated eyebrow raises and fancifully animated facial expressions. Remember, they’re Greeks; they don’t keep calm. After all, this was the birthplace of drama. The Greeks invented theater along these very byways. Tragedy, comedy, and satire have been forever intertwined into everyday existence in Greece. Whether during the Dionysia festival in the 5th century BCE or during a traffic jam in present-day Megara, we Greeks remained richly steeped in the theater of life.

  In an unexpected theatrical twist, my support team was nowhere to be found. Apparently they’d gotten delayed in the traffic backup and had been unable to make it to me as planned. What to do? Should I wait for them or keep going?

  Just then I saw one of my team members, Dimitris, sprinting up to me. He was sweating and out of breath. Dark-olive-skinned, at 6'2" or 6'3" Dimitris was one of the tallest Greeks I’d ever known, and he had spindly long limbs, which may have been one of the reasons he was such an excellent runner.

  “We could not . . .” pant, pant
, pant “get here in time,” he gasped between breaths.

  “Okay, where’s the car?”

  “It’s back . . .” more pants “down the road.”

  “What should I do?”

  He looked at me queerly. “Run back down the road?”

  I wasn’t about to run in the wrong direction, so I thanked him and told him we’d meet at the next crew station, forgetting that it wasn’t for another 25 miles. They were required to leapfrog to Corinth, so I wouldn’t be seeing them for several hours’ time.

  It was a hasty, amateurish move on my part, and I knew better. I didn’t have to run back down the road to get those socks; I could have just waited in Megara for my crew to pull up. Sitting for an extra 5 or 10 minutes over the course of a 153-mile run wasn’t going to have a significant impact on my performance. But running with blisters on my feet would.

  As well, I could have easily left a spare pair of socks at the prerace registration meeting the day prior, to be delivered in advance to Megara should a situation like this arise. Had I done that, my socks would have been waiting for me upon my arrival, and I wouldn’t have found myself in such a predicament.

  My guidance to newbie ultramarathoners is always to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Have a contingency plan for your backup plan, I say. Boy, am I a hypocrite! You’d think during such a significant race I’d practice what I preached. But the reality was that I’d allowed my anxiety to interfere with my judgment. I knew better. We’re told to learn from our mistakes, but how many of us really do? I should have just coolly assessed the situation and reacted rationally, but instead I got flustered and made a rash and foolhardy decision. Hey, I’m Greek. Keeping calm isn’t in my DNA.