Historians have long called Marathon the greatest battle in history, as the shape and direction of our modern world was dependent upon its outcome. If such is the case, it is not overreaching to consider Pheidippides’s historic run to be one of the greatest athletic feats of all time. The Legend of Marathon is famed ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes’s exploration of the battle of Marathon–one of history’s earliest recorded battles–the foot messenger Pheidippides, and the epic drama that inspired the birth of the marathon as we know it. In order to thoroughly investigate this great athletic feat, Karnazes re-creates Pheidippides’s run from Marathon to Athens himself–a 26-plus-mile trek along a treacherous trail–running some of it barefoot and in the same gear the ancient courier would have worn. Working with one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Battle of Marathon (Paul Cartledge, Cambridge University A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture) and informed by his own unique experience as an ultramarathoner, Karnazes paints a breathtaking picture of the run that changed our world.

The Road to Sparta: Reliving the Ancient Battle and Epic Run That Inspired the World’s Greatest Footrace PDF

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