In 490 B.C., the Athenians defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, allowing early democracy to blossom in Greek society and become a foundation of western civilization. Legend has it, after the battle was over a man named Pheidippides ran to spread the news from the battlefield all the way to Athens, where he then collapsed and died from exhaustion. Those 26.2 miles Pheidippides ran became the established distance for the modern marathon.
This past Sunday the Peoria River City Marathon closed streets across town, where over 1,500 people tried their best to chase down Pheidippides. They ran not through the Greek countryside, but rather down streets like Fredonia Avenue and its Greek houses and Jefferson Avenue, Madison Avenue and Adams Street, ironically named for people that carried that same baton of democracy in America.
I had the opportunity to support a pair of my friends as they ran their first marathon. I cheered them on at a couple of mile markers around campus and saw them cross the line at the Civic Center (luckily they didn’t collapse and die afterward).
As I saw them come down the home stretch, I noticed they were weary from the long journey, yet they were smiling because they knew they had done something together that neither of them could have accomplished by themselves. It was then that I thought to myself, “What motivates someone to push their body to the absolute brink of exhaustion?”
This year sports fans have seen athletes drive themselves to their limits. Clayton Kershaw has pitched on short rest and saved games in a pinch for the Dodgers, much like the drive Madison Bumgarner displayed in the past for the Giants. Kobe Bryant pushed himself to the limit just to get out on the floor in his last season with the woeful Lakers and still managed to score 60 points in his final game. It seems almost every hockey player has stayed out on the ice through broken jaws and knocked out teeth. Thomas Davis of the Carolina Panthers even played in Super Bowl 50 with a broken arm.
So why do they do it? Is it for publicity? Maybe. Is it for the love of the game? I suppose it could be. But I think it’s because people are motivated to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and to prove that even though there are setbacks in life, it’s possible to persevere and push through.
The great American distance runner Steve Prefontaine once said, “You have to wonder at times what you’re doing out there. Over the years, I’ve given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.”
Even though the international running community is perpetually placed under the microscope of performance enhancing drugs, I’ve always thought of running as having a sense of purity unseen in other sports. It’s simply incredible how the lungs, heart, brain and muscles synchronize together for such a long period of time.
I’ve competed in and enjoyed many sports throughout my life, but none of them gave me the same feeling of achievement that distance running did. It’s for that reason that it amazes me every time I watch someone challenge the boundaries of both their physical and mental endurances in order to turn their goals into reality. Seeing someone push and persist until success happens inspires me to want to do the same.
Everyone tests themselves in different ways – some athletically, some musically, some artistically, some academically. But I think we all push ourselves for the same reason: To find ourselves, to witness ourselves reach the tops of our mountains and to discover the finest of what we are capable of achieving.
So, what’s your 26.2?
