sidewalk disappears, replaced only by a white line painted along the road, marking off a narrow lane.
Rush hour has begun, and the number of cars has increased. Large buses and trucks whiz right by me,
at about fifty miles per hour. You do get a vague sense of history with a road named Marathon
Avenue, but it’s basically just an ordinary commuter highway.
It’s at this point that I encounter my first dead dog. A large, brown dog. I don’t see any external
injuries. It’s just laid out in the middle of the road. I figured it’s a stray that got hit by a speeding car
in the middle of the night. The body still looks warm, so it doesn’t seem dead. It looks more like it’s
just sleeping. The truck drivers zooming past don’t give it a glance.
A little further on I run across a cat that’s been flattened by a car. The cat is totally flat, like some
misshapen pizza, and dried up. It must have been run over quite a while ago.
That’s the kind of road I’m talking about.At this point I really start to wonder why, having flown all the way from Tokyo to this beautiful
country, I have to run down this dreary commuter road. There must have been other things I could be
doing. The body count for all these poor animals who lost their lives on Marathon Avenue is, on this
day, three dogs and eleven cats. I count them all, which is kind of depressing.
I run on and on. The sun reveals all of itself, and with unbelievable speed rises in the sky. I’m dying
of thirst. I don’t have time to get sweaty, since the air is so dry that perspiration immediately
evaporates, leaving behind a layer of white salt. There’s the expression beads of sweat, but here the
sweat disappears before it can even form beads. My whole body starts to sting from the salty residue.
When I lick my lips they taste like anchovy paste. I start to dream about an ice-cold beer, one so cold
it burns. No beers around, though, so I make do with getting a drink from the editors’ van about every
three miles or so. I’ve never drunk so much water while running.
I feel pretty good, though. Lots of energy left. I’m only going at about 70 percent of capacity, but
am managing a decent pace. By turns the road goes uphill, then down. Since I’m heading from inland
toward the sea, the road is, overall, slightly downhill. I leave behind the city, then the suburbs, and
gradually enter a more rural area. As I pass through the small village of Nea Makri, old people sitting
at an outdoor café sipping morning coffee from tiny cups silently watch me as I run by. Like they’re
witnessing a scene from the backwaters of history.
At around seventeen miles there’s a slope, and once over that I catch a glimpse of the Marathon
hills. I figure I’m about two-thirds finished with the run. I calculate the split times in my head and
figure that at this rate I should be able to finish in three and a half hours. But things don’t go that well.
After I pass nineteen miles the headwind from the sea starts blowing, and the closer I get to Marathon
the harder it blows. The wind is so strong it stings my skin. It feel like if I were to relax at all I’d be
blown backward. The faint scent of the sea comes to me as the road gently slopes upward. There is just the
one road to Marathon, and it’s straight as a ruler. This is the point when I start to feel real exhaustion.
No matter how much water I drink, a few minutes later I’m thirsty again. A nice cold beer would be
fantastic.
No—forget about beer. And forget about the sun. Forget about the wind. Forget about the article I