Memoir

THE ROAD TO SPARTA: RUNNING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ORIGINAL ULTRAMARATHON MAN

by Dean Karnazes (Allen & Unwin £12.99)

Perhaps subconsciously, I like pain,’ confesses top athlete Dean Karnazes. ‘Pain is good. I welcome pain because it makes me feel alive.’ He must have been as happy as a sandboy, then, when he had to endure a ‘fluid-filled blister festering under my big toenail’.

As a person who has never jogged in his life, and would be happy to purr along pavements on a mobility scooter, I’m not likely to see eye-to-eye with the supremely physically fit Karnazes, whose calf muscles bulge like marrows and who thinks nothing of trotting 135 miles across Death Valley, with all his cells ‘screaming out in concurrent agony, from the balls of my feet to the very tip of my nose’.

If a marathon is technically defined as a race of no less than 26.2 miles, Karnazes runs a few of those before breakfast.

Dean Karnazes, an American of Greek extraction, was a millionaire businessman in his 20s

‘Not running was death,’ he says of his obsession, ‘slow, insipid death.’ Speaking as one who, by never breaking into a sweat, has, in that case, been technically demised since 1960, I take my hat off to Karnazes.

In his ‘ultramarathons’ in Vermont, the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, he has tested the limits of human endurance. ‘There are two ways to cope with pain,’ he says. ‘One is to put your head down and grunt through it. I don’t know the other way.’ I do: avoid it.

Karnazes, an American of Greek extraction, tells us he was a millionaire businessman in his 20s. ‘I drove fancy cars, went to posh nightclubs, vacationed on yachts in Tahiti.’

But one day, he gave it all up for the loneliness of the long-distance runner — out went the $400,000-a-year basic salary, stock options and company car.

‘Training and my life became inseparable . . . soon, there was a race in my calendar nearly every month of the year . . . Extreme races in extreme places. No challenge seemed impossible.’

Dean became inspired by Pheidippides to run

His wife appears to have taken it very well, all things considered.

Karnazes became increasingly interested in his own Hellenic heritage as he researched the feats of one Pheidippides, the messenger who, some 2,500 years ago, ran from Athens to Sparta to enlist aid in repelling the invading Persians.

He then ran back to the field of Marathon — where the name comes from — where battle took place.

He finally scarpered back to Athens to announce the Greek victory: ‘a single inspired athletic endeavour’ of 153 miles of continuous running.

Pheidippides then dropped dead of exhaustion at the Acropolis.

Pheidippides was the original Marathon Man, and Karnazes sees himself as a kind of reincarnation. ‘I was Greek and running was something that brought with it great pride. I saw no higher calling.’

Indeed, wishing to re-enact Pheidippides’ gallop, Karnazes seems to approach a state of religious ecstasy. Running and training in his ancestral homeland, ‘I felt more complete’. Through pain, ‘the senses become more acute and attentive’. Checking in to his hotel in Athens was ‘a spiritually impactful moment’.

Karnazes has studied Homer, Socrates, Herodotus and so forth, and his historical flashbacks are intriguing. The Greek victory at Marathon ensured the preservation of ‘their nascent democracy’ and the retreat of ‘the crushing tyranny of Persian totalitarianism’.

The birth of Western European civilisation, the emergence of our free institutions and the growth of an eventual liberal Enlightenment, was safeguarded. Had the Persians, been the ones to win, says Karnazes, they’d have gone in for atrocities and genocide. It was their habit, when conquering a city or country, to kill prisoners and old men, castrate all male children and rape and enslave the women.

His slogan was 'Show me a man who is content and I will show you an underachiever'

The Greeks knew exactly what was at stake, so their army struck quickly and decisively at the invaders. They moved ‘like savage beasts’, says Karnazes, who rather relishes descriptions of the clash, where ‘screams of men and cries of triumph broke in one breath, fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood’.

Not for the first time, I reflected that sport is a channel for pent-up ferocity (I’m Welsh — all that rugby) — and Karnazes’ stern self-discipline is militaristic.

He admires the harsh regimen in Sparta, where males were sent off to a military academy at the age of seven and were taught to despise physical weakness.

The parallels with competitive present- day American business practice are obvious.

THE ROAD TO SPARTA: RUNNING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ORIGINAL ULTRAMARATHON MAN by Dean Karnazes (Allen & Unwin £12.99)

‘Show me a man who is content and I will show you an underachiever’ was one of the off-putting motivational slogans Karnazes was taught when he was becoming a millionaire. They would have said exactly that sort of thing in Sparta.

Anyway, Karnazes calculates that Pheidippides’ total run (of 153 miles) was ‘like six marathons stacked one upon the other’.

Setting off on what looks like being ‘one of the most gruelling physical contests on Earth’, Karnazes is horrified to discover that Greece is no longer the idyllic landscape of Ancient Mythology.

It is thronging with refugees, ‘a tidal wave of displaced individuals seeking asylum and a safe haven from the brutal Assad regime’.

The modern Greek economy has collapsed, bringing 25 per cent unemployment, slashed pensions and punitive taxes, so there are ‘beggars digging through trash bins’. The historical ruins are covered with graffiti.

Despite ‘running for nearly 35 hours straight’, Karnazes didn’t, like his hero, drop dead at the Acropolis. Completing the historical Spartathlon re-enactment, he was told by the medics: ‘My God, you don’t even look tired!’

But, as this sprightly book makes clear, behind the considerable athletic achievement, there are other, chilling echoes of the original Battle of Marathon. The West is again threatened by a clash of cultures emanating from the Middle East and what used to be called Persia, which is not something we can run away from, either