An action to inform students about the ultramarathon SPARTATHLON and the historical meaning of the footsteps of Feidippides was been organized by Doukas Schools of Athens and the International Association of SPARTATHLON.

A group of teachers with the assistance of SPARTATHLON members was responsible to inform the young students about the race, the background, the organizations preparations as well as health and physical preparation of athletes which makes the race so popular.

Date: 2012/10/5
Subject: Spartathlon - Thank you

Dear Mr. P. Tsiakiris,

It was a very big pleasure for me to make my first visit to Greece, and an honour to be able to take part in this 30th edition of the Spartathlon. Thank you so much for accepting my application to race.
The Spartathlon is a unique and great experience, and one that I was very happy to share with all of the other runners.
I would very much like to thank you, all of the Spartathlon organisation, and all the incredible volunteers for all their work. Please do pass on my thanks to the volunteers in particular. They are there waiting for us for many, many hours & we must all be incredibly grateful for their generosity...

Author: James Elson

Finishing the Spartathlon is simple.
All you have to do is run 153 miles in under 36 hours.

 Nothing I had done could have prepared me for just how hard and how epic this race is. I am not usually one for making sweeping statements about races, but for me this was and this is the ultimate. For the first time coming away from a race, I feel like I have found that something I’ve been looking for. Mark Cockbain described it as a pure hard running race. I know now what he meant. Its purity & its difficulty are in its simplicity. It’s you vs 153 miles of road in a severely imposing time limit through the heat of the Greek sun. All other bets are off.
Trying to sum up how hard this race is tricky but I’ll try because I just didn’t get it until the darkest hours just before dawn this past Saturday. 
What does running the Spartathlon feel like? 
You start at the Acropolis in the centre of Athens at first light, along roads choked with commuter traffic blaring horns and pumping exhaust fumes in to morning air thick with humidity. You make your way out of the city and on to a coast road, past oil refineries and eventually alongside beaches lapped by an azure blue sea. You are 50 yards away but that may as well be 1000 miles, because all you are concentrating on is running sufficiently fast enough to beat the cut offs. The temperatures climb fast until by mid morning you are being cooked by a sun at first from the side and then from above. 

Dear Mr. Tsiakiris,

I like to thank all of you for the typical Greek warm hospitality at the occasion of the 29th Spartathlon race. Every time I’m coming to Greece, it feels like coming home and each time I’m flying back to Belgium I’m feeling a little bit sad....

Having taken part in several races and also having made running a part of my daily life, I know intimately the difficulties and emotional experiences provided by “the road”, everything from introspection to the challenge for qualification, from simple selfless joy to the ultimate effort against time and against the natural obstacles posed by an ultra-long distance.
However, I could never have imagined the uplift that I would experience before I found myself on the Spartathlon course and there are really no words to describe the exaltation I felt when I finished in Sparta...

Author: Mimi Anderson
http://marvellousmimi.com

On the 28th September I headed out to Greece along with my husband to take part in the 29th running of the Spartathlon.

 In 2004 I met John Foden who came up with the idea for this race, he said I should give it a go, I remember telling him that I wasn't nearly fast enough to ever take part in such a tough event.

 For those of you who have never heard of the Spartathlon let me fill you in (hope you are sitting down!) This is a 245km (153 mile) non-stop race from Athens to Sparta (with a mountain after 160km) the first 81 km has to be done in 9.30 hours and each checkpoint has its own cut-offs, which are strictly adhered to. If you arrive outside these times you are taken off the course. No music is allowed and runners must complete the race in less than 36 hours. The drop out rate is approximately 60% - now you can see why I have never entered this race.... until now!