I just got back from an amazing Mediterranean cruise, and one of my stops happened to be the historic city of Athens.  We owe a lot of our world to this Greek capital like philosophy, the Olympics, architecture, gyros smothered in tzatziki sauce, but there’s one negative thing (in my opinion) that the Greeks gave us (besides their current financial status), and that is the marathon.  

The legend of the origin of the marathon goes something like this… After the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, a Greek fighter and messenger named Philippides ran from the city of Marathon to Athens to announce that he and his fellow soldiers had successfully defeated the Persians.  It is said that he ran the entire distance of about 25 miles without stopping and burst into the assembly exclaiming, “we have won!” And then he collapsed and died.

That’s right, the first man to run the marathon was actually killed by it, which supports my belief that running is bad for your health.  If it killed a Greek soldier, well then, who am I, with my mediocre physique, to tempt fate?  

I heard the other day that New Delhi, India is so polluted that running a marathon there is equivalent to smoking 8,600 cigarettes.  That report came from NPR, so you know it means that it was (a) true and (b) researched by a Prius-driving Democrat, whom I can assume also wants us to reduce our exhaling carbon emissions.  Who am I to argue with Al Gore on a lift machine?  But just think about this for a second – eight thousand-six hundred cigarettes in the span of a few hours.  That even makes the Marlboro man’s cowboy boots shrivel.  And we’re talking about New Delhi where they burn plastic bottles filled with coal just to make the sky darker.  In 490 BC, the Greek soldier Philippides ran in probably the most pristine air conditions, and he still died.

So science has spoken, running is bad for your health.  But I’m the biassed guy that’s just going to take science at its word here and not argue with the facts, because truth be told, I hate running.  I don’t mind getting some exercise by chasing a soccer ball around a rectangular field for a few minutes.  But I hate running, because, well, it’s boring.  Now, I cycle, but cycling is different than running because a good ride is like 50 miles, and you can see a lot in 50 miles.  A century ride is kind of like a cyclist’s marathon, and imagine how much you can see in 100 miles.  But running?  It’s so slow.  If I wasn’t subjecting my body to a whole lot of pain, I’d probably just fall asleep.  Instead of running 26 miles, why not park your car like a mile away, run to it, then go for a 24 mile drive and then park your call another mile away from your house?  At least then you’ll see a bit of the world, instead of running where you see the front side of the tree and five minutes later, you see the backside.  I know… really stimulating!

The second reason I hate running is because, well, it hurts.  I mean think about it.  Every step, you are lifting your entire body into negative gravity and then driving it back down into the ground with incredible force.  Every bone, ligament, and organ is getting jostled around like a gold-plated el camino in an early 1990s hip hop video.  Every step, my brain is saying, “Dude, this sucks.”  And I tell it, “But just another mile.”  And then my body says, “Dude, this is painful.”  And so I negotiate and say, “Okay, how about a half mile more.”  And then my brain is like, “Really?  You know we could just stop and sit on a couch.”  And that’s when I say, “Yeah, you’re right.  Let’s just do a quarter mile and call it a day.”

I have a friend, who runs every morning, once tell me that some