Marathon endurance test loses itself along the way
AT THE core of this book is an interesting, and at times, absorbing memoir of a man who ran his first marathon for a bet and became an ultra-distance runner, prepared to clock up 6,000 miles of training in order to compete in the toughest footrace on the planet.
That race is the Spartathlon, a 152-mile retracing of the route taken by foot messenger Pheidippides who ran non-stop from Athens to Sparta to beg the Spartans to join the Athenians in battle against the invading Persians at Marathon and his recounting of that experience is a welcome and rewarding climax to a book that otherwise rather loses its footing in deep ruts of over-analysis.
