the bloke who was running away from it

Lounge Lizards,

The Marathon?
Run only because it happened, once, back in the day - September 12, 490 BC.
Marathon?
Some run-down good-for-nothing of a town that just happened to be of critical strategic military importance on the day, when a couple of mobs in disagreement had a helluva toe-to-toe ding-dong brawl over it, by all accounts.
And at the start, it was the bloke who was running away from it, and was praying all the time to what ever God was his, that he'd never have to do it again, ever.
Yet, people still do.
Very hard to find anything more old-fashioned at The Games.
But why 26 miles 385 yards?
When, although no-one has ever quite bothered to get the tape measure out, the road distance between modern day Marathon and Athens is about 25 miles, more or less, in the old money.
In a state of exhaustion from too much sport is barely enough, found myself late at night slumped on the lounge being sucked into the vortex that is Women's Marathon.
In Australian Rules you often hear the commentators say "and it's a perfect day for football" - you never hear anyone saying "and it's a perfect day for a Marathon".
Hot, humid, no breeze to speak of and not a cloud in the sky is never perfect for anything, let alone a brisk stroll in the park.
That said, the lady from Kenya, Jemima Jelegat Sumgong, ran a perfect tactical race under the conditions, and knew it; saying gold was hers in her own head once she passed the 40km signpost from where she came from.
"I knew I was on the way to history.”
She knew all day the others would fade away, one-by-one, struggling in agony every inch of the way, with wildly different contortions of extreme pain and dreadful suffering written all over their faces.
In a race where there is no mercy, they all looked like they were in desperate need of urgent drug treatment; please, just a pinch of some of that Colombian Marching Powder, just to keep me going to the finish of it all, please, just please.
After plodding along brilliantly for all of two hours twenty four minutes and four seconds, Ms Sumgong won by a mere nine seconds - but she knew that was enough, she knew she would win - it was never in doubt.
She knew it might as well be daylight between her and silver, the margin back to second never counts, despite the appearance of it being a close run thing.
From the get go - a classic war of attrition - at its finest.
Good to watch