Think a marathon sounds challenging? Later this month, 400 athletes embark on a 246km, 36-hour endurance test in Greece. They tell Nick Rufford why they do it.
Shortly before she collapsed from heat and exhaustion, Sophie Power was having the time of her life. The 39-year-old from Guildford had been running for 36 hours and her sun-scorched skin was caked in road dust. Ice that she'd stuffed down her sports bra at a rest stop had long ago melted and she was limping from a swelling in her left leg. Yet the tears that rolled down her face as she reached the finish were tears of joy.
"My eyes are welling up now, just remembering," says Power, who was revived by medics at a temporary field hospital. "It was just so hard, and it was my first big race after becoming a mother. Suddenly I felt that I wasn't only a mum, that I'd really done something incredible."
Starting at dawn the previous day, in the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens, Power had covered 246km nonstop to the Greek town of Sparta, completing what many athletes regard as the world's toughest endurance race: the Spartathlon.
The London Marathon scheduled for next month is a stroll in the park by comparison. Marathoners would have to go six times round the course to match Power's distance. If it sounds as though the Spartathlon is for fitness fanatics and those who've taken leave of their senses, you'd be surprised at just how popular it is: the race is so oversubscribed, the Greek authorities turn away hundreds each year.
Some people dream of diving the Great Barrier Reef, riding the Orient Express or driving the Amalfi coast, but for endurance runners the Spartathlon is perhaps the ultimate achievement. Later this month 390 "lucky" competitors, including 21 from the UK, will line up for the chance to run themselves ragged on mile after mile of tarmac and remote trails across the Peloponnese and over a 1,220 metre mountain, having paid a €600 ($1000) entry fee. More so than the Badwater race through Death Valley, Peru's Jungle Ultra or even the Marathon des Sables across the Sahara desert, the Spartathlon is a brutal trial by pain. Only half will finish; the rest will drop out or simply drop. Even the ones who make it will more than likely need medical treatment. Blood samples taken from finishers bear an alarming resemblance to those of people dying from liver cirrhosis or liver cancer, medical studies have revealed.
The Spartathlon is feared and revered for its terrain and its history. In 490BC a Greek messenger called Pheidippides was reputedly dispatched on foot from Athens to request help from the Spartan army to defeat the invading Persians. His duty done, he ran on to announce news of victory at the battle of Marathon — a dash that was the genesis of the modern 42km run. The effort of his twin labours overcame him and he dropped dead when he reached Athens.
Pheidippides' route from Athens to Sparta was reconstructed in 1982 by a Royal Air Force officer, John Foden, a student of Greek history and a keen runner who, bored with marathons, had the idea for the annual torture-fest. As well as time cut-offs that disqualify all but the fastest, there are temperature extremes, both high and low, steep inclines and precipitous drops. Recently it has become a test bed for scientists curious about the changes that take place in the human body when pushed to its very limits and, as in Pheidippides' case, beyond.
"I think there's something in wanting to know where your limits are, and testing your body," says Power, a technology consultant and mother of three who took up running to regain fitness after her first child. "I think we're all capable of so much more than we think we are, and our bodies are incredible. Reaching your limits gives a great sense of achievement and it also makes you stronger in the rest of your life."
Power is already training for next year's event, which requires running up to 160km a week, sometimes a marathon a day as the race draws near. She will take part in the London Marathon, though admits that "finishing it is not remotely comparable to the Spartathlon".
The race's formidable reputation draws endurance runners from all over the world. Dean Karnazes, the American who made his name running 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days across 50 US states, wrote a book called The Road to Sparta about his Spartathlon experience and said it was like no other race. "There came a point where I found it almost impossible to put one foot in front of the other," he recalled. As he staggered to the finish he was "ushered into a medical tent [where] the scene was shocking, total carnage. I've been through many post-race medical checks but never had I witnessed anything quite like this place. Some runners were slumped over with their heads buried between their knees while others lay lifelessly on cots with IVs [intravenous drips] protruding from their arms. Many had splints or temporary casts on their legs. Soft cries and moans echoed throughout and people coughed and wheezed uncontrollably. Medics wearing surgical gloves darted about frantically trying to attend to all the wounded."
He concluded that physical stamina was not sufficient for the Spartathlon. "There comes a time when the human body is fully tapped out, depleted and spent and that's when mental strength comes into play." He coined the phrase "there's magic in misery" to describe his 2014 struggle, though he couldn't finish the race when he tried again in 2018.
Dr Dora Papadopoulou, an orthopaedic surgeon and sports injury specialist, has been treating Spartathletes for the past 12 years for sprains, fractures and serious cases of hyperthermia or hypothermia (too hot or too cold), and over or underhydration. She works with a team of volunteers consisting of 20 doctors and physiotherapists and 50 medical and nursing students from the University of Peloponnese, who care for the sick and injured. About eight in ten finishers need medical attention. The most serious cases — about five each year — are transferred to the main hospital in Sparta. No one has so far died on her watch, she reveals. "Would they have died without the right treatment or expertise? Who knows," she says. "People have died after similar races. People say Spartathletes are mad but I admire them. It is a very lonely race and they are very courageous. They are Greek heroes."
David Bone, 49, a running coach from London, was one of her patients when he completed the race in 34 hours 56 minutes (anything under 35 hours is a marvel). "I remember this really kind lady said to me, 'Do you mind if I take your shoes off and inspect your feet [for injuries]?' I thought, 'Can you imagine anything worse than having to inspect people's feet after they've run for a day and a half?' Then, as my shoes came off I just whited [fainted from low blood pressure] and the next thing I knew I was lying on one of their hospital beds with a drip and a medical team around me."
Counterintuitively, older runners are often better equipped to last the distance than younger athletes. A recent report in Extreme Physiology & Medicine found that the fastest finishers in Spartathlon and Badwater, its US rival, were aged 40-45, overturning the researcher's expectations that the age of peak ultramarathon performance was between 30 and 40. For the Spartathlon, said by some to be the harder of the two races, the average ages of male and female finishers were at the higher end of the range: 44.8 and 44.5 respectively.
James Ellis, a nutritionist and captain of the British Spartathlon team, is 53. This year's race will be his sixth, having finished four Spartathlons and abandoned one after an injury. He used to run marathons, including London and Brighton, but stopped when he got hooked on the Spartathlon. Last year he travelled to Athens to run the course just to maintain fitness, even though the race was cancelled by Covid. "Most Spartathalon runners tend to start quite late in life," he says. "There seems to be a common theme of people who have refound a love, or gained a love, of fitness. I also think to run those kind of distances you need mental fortitude, which only comes with experience. I am probably fitter and more healthy and faster now than I've ever been in my whole life over that distance.
"The big challenge for most runners is hitting the checkpoint at Corinth, 50 miles (80km) into the race," Ellis warns. "To get there before the cut-off you've got to run two back-to-back marathons in nine and a half hours. Once you get out of Athens and away from the traffic you're running on the coast. You've got the Mediterranean on one side and a rock face on the other. If there's no wind coming in off the sea it's incredibly, stupidly hot. Many people tend to drop out there. Once you get past that 50-mile point it cools down a little and the speed you need to get to each checkpoint drops off."
The most physically demanding section is running over Mount Parthenion, he says. The night-time ascent along a mountain path rises 1,000 metres to the summit of "Peak Pain". Veterans claim the exertion required is the thing that keeps them going at night when their body is demanding sleep. Even blisters help to focus the mind. "They are your friend because the pain keeps you awake," Ellis quips.
Runners must eat as they go. "You fuel on carbohydrates and you've got a store of about 2,000 to 2,500 calories in your body, in your muscles and in your liver. That store tends to run out after about three hours and you need to take on some food, either [nutritional] gels or the occasional piece of fruit from one of the 75 checkpoints."
As well as blisters, cramps, heat exhaustion and dehydration, many runners hallucinate. "I was running past a quarry and you could see lines in the rock where excavators had dug into it," Ellis says. "To my eyes, the lines transformed into Greek letters spelling out the word 'Help'." Power recalls seeing phantom runners ahead of her. When she tried to catch up, they would vanish. Karnazes had an out-of-body experience as if he was flying and looking down at a "strutting stick man" beneath him. "Then it struck me — the runner down below was me."
Cat Simpson, 37, an intensive care nurse from London, ran the Spartathlon in 2018, the only female runner in a British team of 25. It was the year with the highest number of drop-outs — including Karnazes. She ran through high winds and torrential rain brought by a storm called Cyclone Zorba. Cold and exhausted at the finish, she was taken to a medical tent and put on two drips. "Suddenly your body kind of gives up on you. I had very low blood pressure and I wasn't able to drink very much. They covered me in blankets and gave me IV fluids. Partly it's the euphoria; your legs just give way and you collapse on the spot."
Simpson says women can stand a better chance of finishing. "They often pace it a lot better. They set out a bit slower at the start and can have a higher finish rate."
Some experts believe that ultramarathon runners build up resistance to pain. Dr Carla Meijin, a sport psychologist at St Mary's University, London, says: "Through training you can become more tolerant towards pain and there is some evidence that women may feel more confident in their ability to manage pain post-childbirth. But it is important to be able to develop an awareness of good and bad pain — pain does serve a function."
Is there a danger of overdoing things? "You want a personal challenge, [but with] ultras it sometimes gets out of control," Simpson says, laughing. "You kind of want to go further and faster and then you end up at that end of the spectrum. It's about managing your body, but it's not so much a physical feat, it's a mental feat — more so than just going flat out as you do at shorter distances."
Some runners are finding their way back to fitness after undergoing treatment for unrelated medical conditions, or experiences that have made them reflect on their own mortality. Laura Watts is hoping to run this year's Spartathlon after beating stage 2 skin cancer. The 44-year-old from Bognor Regis, West Sussex, is a flight service manager for Virgin Atlantic and has run 86 marathons and 27 ultramarathons. The Spartathlon is top of her bucket list, she says.
"I read once that ultrarunning is more addictive than heroin. I've definitely never taken heroin, but I do love the ultrarunning. The highs are incredible. When I ran my first marathon in 2003, I thought that was the biggest achievement of my life, and it was amazing, but since then I've discovered that there's so much more out there. I honestly used to think that these people were superhuman, but I don't feel superhuman at all.
"[After a race] I think, 'I'm never running that far again,' and then two days later, once I've recovered, I'm thinking, what's next? You forget that pain. You don't know what you're capable of until you've tried it. Of course you've got to be fit, but I'm generally not the fastest, I'm a middle-of-the-pack kind of person. As long as you've got that strong mental attitude you'll succeed, but once your mind starts to tell you you're going to give up, that's it."
Pheidippides carried nothing and ran in sandals. Modern runners wear advanced, lightweight shoes, but in deference to the race's austere beginnings they are not allowed to use headphones. That alone makes it harder than many ultramarathons, says Ellis, because "there are no distractions from the voice in your head telling you to give up". He adds: "There are times when you curse the race and think, 'Why the hell am I doing this again?' "
"It's like a rollercoaster," Simpson agrees. "You can go from having really high moments to really low moments in quite short spaces of time, and not really for any reason. You have to learn not to focus on those emotions and to try and zone out, almost like yoga. You try not to think about things too much. You just meditate and think of nothing."
All runners agree that nothing compares with the jubilation at reaching the finish, traditionally celebrated by kissing the feet of the towering bronze statue of King Leonidas in Sparta and drinking from the Evrotas river in homage to Pheidippides. "There's real euphoria," Ellis says. "The whole town comes out and cheers you. It doesn't matter whether you are the fastest runner or the slowest, you get a fantastic welcome. Little kids run up to you or cycle alongside and girls put crowns of olive branches on your head."
Perhaps because it's such a trial of mental strength, or because runners put aside their everyday concerns, the Spartathlon has a unique spirit of camaraderie, says Power, who has also run the Marathon des Sables and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. "It's a great leveller. The first thing people ask you in daily life is what you do for a living, but this is one of the last questions you'll hear in the race."
Simpson agrees the Spartathlon has a unique sense of comradeship. "It's sociable running with people at the early stages. Inevitably, though, people spread out and separate over the distance, so you have to get used to your own company."
Perhaps that's why some people call it the Race of Life. Ultimately, the Spartathlon is a battle fought alone. There's no reward for finishing — no money and no prize, just knowing that you've done it. Those who make it to the end can also take comfort in the fact that, unlike Pheidippides, they don't have to turn round and run back to Athens.
In it for the long run: The British veteran still going strong at 73
Doug Alsop's three-point plan for running ultramarathons is "finish, finish, finish". At 73 he was the oldest competitor in July's Lakeland 100 fell race, Britain's answer to the Spartathlon. Runners must climb and descend a total of 6,096 metres on rough tracks through the mountains of the Lake District. Alsop, from St Austell, Cornwall, completed the 170km in 37 hours, 53 minutes and 10 seconds. He also got to join the Lakeland 500, an elite group of five-time finishers. "I took a few falls early on the first night in the mountains and was a bit bloodied," he says. "I know I'm never going to win it — I've never won anything in my life — but I'm going to get to the end."
Alsop, who was 38 before he began distance running, says he's "extremely fortunate" to still be in good shape. "I haven't abused myself with drugs, smoking or anything, but luck plays a big part and I've got to this age without being hit by a bus or having any major ailment."
Written by: Nick Rufford
© The Times of London