Origins of Marathon

As we saw in our last lesson, Marathon is one of the long distance events in athletics. In marathon, athletes must run 42,195 meters as fast as possible. The name of this race comes from de city of Marathon, the place Pheidippides came from towards Athens in order to annonce that the persians had been defeated by de greeks.

When Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic Games in 1896, he wanted to include a new event in Athletics, dedicated to the mentioned fact, calling it Marathon, as we know it now.

The world record in Marathon has been recently broken by Dennis Kimetto, from Kenya, finishing the race in 2:02:57 hours. That time means that Kimetto could arrive in Cabra from Plaza Nueva in less than 30 minutes. Amazing!