Today the Rome Marathon is being run. At events like these many people ask me what a marathon is and what pleasure there is in running all those miles.
This thought by Mauro Covacich, writer and runner, is one possible explanation.
“The marathon is a kind of permanent belief: it is enough to have run it just once to feel like a marathon runner for life. Kind of like psychoanalysis. Yes, I consider it a form of martial art, an inner discipline. It inherently is. For the training it requires, for the way it leads you to perceive the environment, for the effort it demands of your body. The marathon runner is a samurai with slippers instead of a sword: he is extremely strict towards himself, he never forgives himself, he is constantly fighting his own limits… Those who think of the marathon as a sporting choice are wrong; it is a maximally aesthetic discipline. It is really a worldview: it is not just those forty-two kilometers to run in the shortest possible time, it is the idea of enduring, of going beyond…”
(Mauro Covacich)
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