Marathon

The 1896 Olympic marathon

Marathon is usually called as a road race. For a Marathon it takes 42.195 kilometers as official distance also called 26 miles and 385 yards. There was a Greek soldier called Pheidippides who has to do a messenger job. He had to send the message from the Marathon to Athens which took place in August or September, 490 BC. He has died after this message has delivered. Marathon is the city which the battle was held. The battle was between Persians and Greeks. This is the history behind the Marathon.

When Olympic game comes it included this as a game calling in same name. But the distance was not fixed. it was vary but around 40 km. Here is a list for that. Anyway after 1924 it get fixed & now we are running 26.22 miles for a standard Marathon game. This is now valid for world wide

Olympic marathon distances
Year	Distance (km)	Distance (miles)
1896	40	24.85
1900	40.26	25.02
1904	40	24.85
1906	41.86	26.01
1908	42.195	26.22
1912	40.2	24.98
1920	42.75	26.56
1924 onward	42.195	26.22

Normally it will take around 2+ hours to finish this game & for the moment the world record is 2h03:38 by Patrick Makau on 25 September 2011. And he is a Kenya guy.