I'm planning to run the original marathon in Athens this November. Hopefully I won't suffer the fate of the first participant.

Any H&F folks done this one before or planning to?

Me and a buddy are tentatively planning 2019

Been on my list. Hoping to get drawn in the Houston-Athens Exchange program

Registration is open! Registered and booked an Airbnb a few blocks from the Olympic stadium.

Less than a month to go!

Dude I'm jealous

11 days to go. Long term forecast is looking good with high of 65, hopefully that holds.

That's awesome, and I join in the jealousy. Good luck!

Finished in 3:58. It is a fairly tough course with approx 1300ft of elevation gain. It is mostly uphill until mile 20 so I started very slow to conserve my energy. I wasn't really hurting until about mile 24 so I did reasonably well with the pacing.

The race doesn't start until 9am so it was quite hot by the halfway point.

It is a well organized race with supportive spectators. Near the beginning some of the spectators were handing out olive branches for runners to carry to the finish. Also a herd of sheep got loose and one started running against the flow of runners; it was pretty funny seeing the surprised faces and people jumping out of the way.

Of course the main draw is that this is the 'original' marathon and finishing in the ancient Pantheatic Stadium was really cool. Not surprisingly there were runners from all over the world (including a good number of Americans).

There's no post race party to speak of. They hand you a bag with a Powerade and a water and a banana and that's it. Fortunately our AirBnb is close to the finish so I limped home and drank a beer.