13 Miles

Day 71.

I did my 10k race today. Actually, I did 6 miles, which I guess is pretty close.

And I did it fast. Well, fast for me. I ran the 6 miles in 58 minutes 8 seconds. That’s right: Under 10 minutes a mile for the first time — and at a distance that almost means something.

I’ve taken into account many things I’ve learned from the comments I get on this blog from you guys. Setting a pace, how to think about the run and different ideas on speed, music and encouragement.

I also weighed in today. A BIG DAY TODAY: Under 200 lbs for the first time in a while. Down another four pounds. That makes 27 pounds in 71 days. Not too bad.

Now we’re getting close. But I thought a quick history lesson is in order. A friend told me about the true part of this when I first started running. I had to look some of it up and make some of it up, but you’ll get the point.

THE STORY OF PHEIDIPPIDES AND HIS HALF-BROTHER

Pheidippides, or Phil let’s call him, was a 40-year-old rather fit guy. It was 490 B.C. and he’d been lucky enough to have lived at the historic and celebratory “500 Years ‘Til Christ” ball drop ten years previous.

But things were not so great for Phil and his friends and Greek countrymen. They were raging in a war. The hated Persians were a much stonger army. They were winning the Persian War — so much so they had already won the naming rights.

Then came the Battle of Marathon. The outnumbered Greek army was going at it hard with the Persians. Phil was there. So was his half-brother Halphuslogallies, or Half for short. Whereas Phil had always been a go-getter, a do-everything-one-hundred-percent kind of guy, Half … not so much. Half always found a way to get the job done the easiest and most efficient way possible. He was though, as they say, a survivor.

A few days before, Phil was in Athens. He had to run to Sparta to get help for the battle of Marathon. It’s 150 miles, but he ran it in two days. Now back in Marathon, and thanks to the help Phil rounded up, the Greeks were winning the battle.

And then they actually won the battle. Phil and Half were celebrating, when someone realized maybe they should tell everyone back in Athens. Phil and Half were recruited. They took off running to Athens to tell everyone the good news: The Persians were defeated.

Along the way, the two half-brothers began arguing. They argued over the conversion from miles to kilometers. Half was sure the 40 km were close to 26 miles. Phil insisted the distance was closer to 30 miles. To prove his point, Half stopped after 13 miles. He said he would stop there, get a horse from a local horse man, Odometrious, who happened to live exactly 13.1 miles from Marathon. The horse he was to borrow had a funny contraption Odometrious said would keep track of distance traveled. Odometrious said he’d have to wait an hour or so while the horse was getting ready. Since he was no longer going to be running, and he was quite thirsty, he decided to feast and drink with Odometrious, in a celebratory mannor.

Meanwhile, Phil had a mission to complete. He continued running. And running. And running. Finally, after what seemed like 26.2 miles, he reached Athens.

“We have won!” he yelled out to all those who had gathered around.

Then Phil died. He just dropped dead.

“Wow,” said the onlookers. “He just ran all the way to tell us that and died. What was he thinking? We live in 490 B.C. Instant communication will not be necessary for centuries. What was the rush? What a shame. He was a good guy, just a little obsessed with the running thing.”

About three hours later, a somewhat drunk Half rode into town on a horse. He had news to tell everyone. They had won the Battle of Marathon. When everyone responded with things like, “Yeah, we already know” and “Your brother died after telling us that earlier” and “Where did you get drunk?” he let them know something else. “There’s a big feast about … ” and he checked the contraption on the horse … “13.1 miles that way. Hey, what do you know, I was right. It was 26.2 miles from here to Athens.”

Everyone got on their horses and rode to the party near Odometrious’ place. It was decided that the efforts of both Phil and Half should be memorialized somehow.

Each year, runners would sign up to run either a Phil Marathon run (26 miles) or a Half Marathon run (13.1 miles). After the runners would complete their run, a feast would be had in their honor. For the first two or three centuries, no one signed up for the Phil Marathon in fear of death at the finish line. Most who ran the Half Marathon were quite happy with their decision.

Later, the Olympics people decided to go crazy, and made an event simply called the Marathon. It was 26 miles. The craziness caught on, and soon runners all over the world — who were in better shape by then — were running Marathons and NOT dying. It was a novel idea.

But even more popular are Half-Marathons. They take around two hours give or take and then there’s a celebration.

All in honor of our hero, Halphuslogallies.

I hope you enjoyed today’s history lesson.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 9:10 am and is filed under Training | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.