We have a special relationship, Spartathlon and I.  That relation stretches all the way back to 1985.  There have been an eight year absence, but now we met again.  I wasn't really trained for a race this brutal, but my desire for Spartathlon was stronger than the power of my common sense.

Bright scholars of the science of human behavior may strain their brains in attempts to figure out why people from all inhabited continents, and all cultures, can be attracted by a race like this.  There is for certain some element of addiction that makes runners come back, year after year.  The answer to the question "why?" can only be found on the road to Sparta.  In my case there was a special reason to take on the challenge this year.  A monument made of marble has recently been erected over the race, in the middle of the main avenue in Sparta.  All the winners through the years have got their names carved in to the monument.  On three places it reads Rune Larsson.

Many people will get their names carved in stone, together with the date they were born and when they died.  To have ones own name in stone during the life time is less common.  I wanted to run there and see it for myself.  One might argue that the entire run becomes an ego trip if the purpose is so vain, and I can agree to that, just because I am unable to explain the amount of feelings that are involved in a Spartathlon. 

We started from Acropolis in Athens at the first light of the day, at seven in the morning.  272 runners from 30 countries ran away through the dense rush hour traffic.  There was a policeman in every intersection and we were granted free passage.  If the amount of cursing and swearing in the Greek language stood in proportion to the amount of signaling from irritated motorists who were waiting until all the runners had passed, as they found themselves being late for work, then the angels in Heaven might have been shedding a few tears.

The 246 kilometer long road to Sparta took us out of the city and continued along the coast.  The sun came up and the temperature became very pleasant for the tourists who were laying on the beaches or sitting in the shade, drinking something with ice in it.  But for me, all the feelings of pleasure did gradually disappear during the day.  My body felt worn already after 60 kilometers.  If that process would follow a linear development, then the curve of exhaustion would soon meet the dark hole of collapse.  This didn't feel good.

Every one of the 75 checkpoints has a cutoff-time when the runners must have passed.  Sometime during the afternoon, I discovered that I did only have five minutes margin to being eliminated from the race.  Stress was building up inside.  To be lifted off the road after only 80 kilometers would feel terrible.  No fit ultra runner should be exhausted at that early stage, at least not without a very good reason.  I was almost totally spent, but my only reason was that my training had been insufficient. 

One of the runners with whom I shared the struggle against those threatening cutoff-times was the English mathematician Mark Williams.  He looks just like a stereotype of his profession and nationality - tall, slim, and glasses.  While we fought the clock among the vineyards and olive orchards of Peloponnesus, ridden by the fear of being eliminated if we didn't make it in time to the next checkpoint, we tried to help each other to keep the spirit up.  Then he suddenly says something that might seem strange.

"Excuse me for asking, I hope you don't take it the wrong way, but why are you so bad this year?"

I explained that I was very flattered to receive such a question, because it meant that he still perceived me as the runner I once was, many years ago.  He was told that I nowadays am very pleased if it is possible to make it to Sparta at all.  This race is so special that one doesn't need to chase the top places in order to find the road worth running.  Furthermore, I explained, there is no way any runner in this race can be labeled as bad.  When one is standing on the starting line beneath Acropolis, one knows that there are only two ways to get to Sparta.  If the body and the mind will last all the way, exhaustion is inevitable, due to the long distance and all the hardships.  The other alternative is to drop out.  Then the trip will change from being by foot to riding a bus.  In the bus, one has to sit for many hours in sweaty running clothes while they drive from checkpoint to checkpoint, picking up brothers and sisters of misfortune.  The runners who dare to start do also dare to meet either exhaustion or a bus ride.  Those who have tried both alternatives tend to prefer exhaustion.  So, as I explained to Mark Williams, we are not bad just because we are struggling many hours behind the leaders.  He agreed.

Fatigue is an interesting phenomenon.  According to popular believe, the process will only go one way.  That means, fatigue becomes worse and worse the more the body works, and the process can only be reversed by resting.  In Ultradistance races of this caliber, other laws of nature apply.  In Spartathlon, for example, fatigue can disappear while one is running.  Luckily, this happened to me.  The body started to feel much better after 100 kilometers of running.  The margin to the cutoff-times was growing for every checkpoint.  The landscape was beautiful, the road was narrow, the traffic was sparse, and our bodies that were fried by the sun a few hours ago were now surrounded by the cool air of the evening.  It did simply become more fun to run. 

Darkness fell and the course winded its way over ridges, through villages, and by farms where the dogs had long already barked themselves hoarse over the runners who passed before us.  In one of those villages, Akro Nemea, there was a checkpoint, and some kind of town party seemed to go on, because of all the people on the main street.  What I didn't know when I passed there was that Kenny Wallström was sitting in the dusk behind the service table.  He came that far, but not longer.  Now he had suffered some kind of meltdown in the motivation center of the brain. 

"I saw you, but did not dare to let you know my presence, because I feared that you would have convinced me to keep on running with you," he told me afterwards. 

Kenny's tremendously strenuous season, that among other hardships included a 2040 kilometer run from north to south of Sweden in just three weeks, had finally caught up with him.  There was just one remedy for the motivation disorder that he now suffered from - rest.

Even though Kenny made himself invisible at the checkpoint in Akro Nemea, he was by far the runner who was seen most before, during, and after the race.  The organizers used a picture of him, taken when he ran in Spartathlon 2003, and made Kenny the race logotype.  Kenny Wallström from Skellefteå in Sweden could be seen on every official vehicle, as well as on posters, house walls, and a lot of other places.  In spite of him dropping out in Akro Nemea, he seemed to be there anyway in a very noticeable way.

Another fellow participant whom I passed in the darkness of the night was the Finn Seppo Leinonen.  He is the runner who has finished most Spartathlons.  The Mayor of Sparta has crowned his head with an olive wreath no less than 15 times.  Mayors have come and gone, according to how the Spartans have voted, but Seppo has continued to run.  In addition to his 15 finishes, he does also have seven drop outs.  How many runners have participated 22 times in the same race?  In a regular marathon, one might find some, but here we are talking about a 246 kilometer race!

There are many parameters that have contributed to make Spartathlon great, enabling the race to survive since 1983.  One such thing is the historic heritage.  The courier Pheidippides ran here with a request that the Spartans should come to aid the Athenians when the Persians were attacking.  This happened 2496 years ago.  The Spartans had some religious reasons to postpone their march, and that did indicate lack of unity between the Greek states.  That episode was quieted down when the Greeks were finally united into one state.  Instead they invented the story that Pheidippides had ran from Marathon to Athens with a message of victory.  This was neither the first nor the last time when history was re-written in order to fit the politically suitable, but thanks to that we do have the marathon race today.  Spartathlon is the mother of marathon running.

Another thing that has made the race great is that it is tremendously well organized.  The achievement of finding people to man all the 75 checkpoints, and make sure there are something to eat and drink, as well as other kinds of necessities, on each and every one of the checkpoints is worth the highest degree of honor and respect.  At the checkpoints there was water, cola, juice, sports drinks, coffee, and on some places also beer and whiskey.  Help yourself!  The whiskey was not intended to lower any possible anxiety, neither was the purpose to raise the spirits by intoxication.  Instead it served as some kind of medicine against the feeling of disgust one can develop against fluids and foods that has been ingested too many times since the race started. 

The 148-kilometer checkpoint was located by a narrow road in the middle of nowhere, and only a single propane lamp kept the darkness away by the feeding table.  The grasshoppers' playing sounded like a grandiose tinnitus.  A man and a woman stood there and they greeted me welcome.  On the table there stood, among water bottles, cola mugs, yoghurt, rice puddings, and bread, also a bottle of a kind that in Sweden only can be sold in very special stores.  I poured a small amount in a cup, said "cheers" to the officials, and let the two centiliters stay in the mouth a little while before they were swallowed.  My taste buds felt like were they renovated, and I did suddenly get a tremendous appetite.  With my fat Greek yoghurt in one hand and a plastic spoon in the other hand, I walked away in the night, happily eating.

A mighty mountain rose in front of me.  We runners call it the Sangas mountain, because of the Sangas pass at its crest.  The road was winding its way upward like a serpent, until the course took to a rocky trail, marked by glow lights and reflective stripes, the last two kilometers up to the crest.  A cool breeze was blowing at the pass, 1200 meters above sea level. 

On the way down on the other side of the mountain, I passed a petite Japanese lady who had some problem with all the loose rocks that wanted to give us a ride down to the valley as soon as a running shoe was landing on them.  Shortly thereafter I caught up with a man who staggered, his shoulders and arms hanging by his sides.  He seemed to be in a state of apathy and did return my greeting in an unarticulated way.  However, he was distinct when it came to declining my offer to help him down the mountain, but I did alert the officials at the checkpoint in the village Sangas that they could expect a runner in need of special care.

The Norwegian Eiolf Eivindsen sat at a table in Sangas and ate.  We ran out if the village together.  Eiolf is, just like me, 50 years old.  His hair is grey and ends in a ponytail.  His weather worn face is enhanced by a big grey moustache; he looks like a seasoned pirate of the Caribbean.  Together we ran in to the dawn and met the new day on the narrow roads of Arcadia.  Eiolf seemed to be full of energy, while my strength was fading for every kilometer.  At the checkpoint in Tegea, after 195 kilometers, I asked him to go on by himself, since I could not manage his tempo. 

With the new day came the new heat.  My kilometer splits were not impressive, but it was still possible to stagger on.  By the foot of a long uphill, I caught up with Christian Ritella.  It was fun to meet another Swede in the race, but our running together did not last long, since he had much more strength left than I had.  Christian was striding up the hill in a tempo way beyond my capacity.  He disappeared like a white dot down the mountain on the other side of the crest.  It was 20 kilometers to go, but I was totally spent. 

Now I must only keep the final collapse away and get to the finish by whatever I could find in my body.  The skin felt like as if I had a fever.  The nervous system seemed to have packed in for the day, but my legs could always take another step, and then another, and another.

All these steps added up to enough kilometers, and I did finally stagger in to Sparta.  There, on the main street, an avenue with palm trees in the middle stood the white Spartathlon monument.  If I looked closely to the left, I could find my ego trip, my name in Greek letters.  The avenue ended at the statue of King Leonidas, and that was the finish.  Absolutely exhausted I wobbled on and touched the statue, incredibly happy that the strength and energy lasted all the way. 

My head was crowned with an olive wreath; the medics made a quick estimation of my status, said something about possible potassium deficiency, placed me in a wheelchair, and rolled me in to the second of the two hospital tents.  In the first one, there was runners who only needed to rest a little before they were taken to the hotel, but in the second tent, they took care of those who needed medical attention of various degrees.  I was placed in a bed next to my wife Mary.  She was getting her fourth bag of IV-solution.  When the medics had examined me and hooked me up to a bottle of my own, she could tell about her race.  Mary is suffering from a chronic inflammation of the large intestine and got an attack of that disorder during the race.  The stomach did not keep anything.  Everything that she ingested came right through her, but she continued anyway the best she could.  It was apparently good enough, because she finished third among the women.  The Japanese lady in second place was only a minute ahead, but Mary didn't understand that until she had finished.

Mary has her name in four places on the monument.  She won the first time in 1984, 24 years old.  Now, 46 years old, she ran two and a half hour faster than what she did then.  If it had been harmful to run this far, and to get this exhausted, then Mary would not have been able to run this well, year after year.  Spartathlon might not be labeled as a health enhancing activity, but it is most likely not causing any permanent damage to the body.

Otto Elmgart finished shortly after Mary.  We were six Swedes who started, and four of us finished.  Kenny dropped out, and so did Kjell-Ove Skoglund.  He suffered an accident in the race between Nikkaloukta and Abisko last summer, where he fell and fractured his scull, but continued the remaining 80 kilometers to the finish anyway.  Besides, what choice did he have?  How does one drop out from a race where there are no roads at all for more than 100 kilometers?  Afterwards he had surgery and had to take a long break from running, and that was not good for his chances to finish Spartathlon.

The day after the race, all the participants moved slowly, on stiff legs.  Some of us staggered down to the Spartathlon monument.  And what did we see?  The organizers had already the winners name carved in to the marble.  Scott Jurec, USA, it read on the male side of the monument.  On the female side it read Sumie Inagaki, Japan. 

I hope this fantastic race will be run so many times in to the future that the stone will not be big enough for all the names.