The Road to Sparta E-Book

Dean Karnazes

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 422

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

In 490 BCE Pheidippides ran for 36 hours straight from Athens to Sparta to seek help in defending Athens from a Persian invasion. He was hailed as a hero and his run stands enduringly as one of greatest physical accomplishments in history. Dean Karnazes honours this achievement and his own Greek heritage by attempting this ancient journey in modern times. His account of running the gruelling Spartathlon, fuelled only by the figs, olives and meats available to Pheidippides, will captivate even the most sedentary readers.

Leseprobe

First published in Great Britain by Allen & Unwin in 2017

First published in the United States in 2016 by Rodale Wellness, an imprint of Rodale Inc.

Copyright © Dean Karnazes 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The moral right of Dean Karnazes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Allen & Unwin

c/o Atlantic Books

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London WC1N 3JZ

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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

Trade Paperback ISBN 978 1 76029 465 6

E-book ISBN 978 1 95253 572 7

Internal design by Joanna Williams

Photographs by Vladimir Rys, Elias Lefas and Babis Giritziotis

To Pheidippides and the ancient Greeks, who lived and died for what they believed

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

1. IMMIGRANT SONG

2. WHO AM I?

3. FIELDS OF FENNEL

4. UNITED BY CALVES

5. ALL IN

6. BEYOND

7. SPARE THE HORSES

8. LET’S ROCK

9. THE PERSIANS HAVE LANDED

10. ORIGINS OF A CLASSIC

11. TOGA!

12. COMING HOME

13. WELCOME TO GREECE

14. VILLAGE IN THE HILLS

15. GIVER OF THE WATERMELON

16. SIGN ME UP

17. HAND ME THE CONTROLS

18. FOR GREECE, FOR HOME

19. THE RACE IS ON

20. IT’S IN THE AIR

21. ENCOUNTERS OF THE ULTRA KIND

22. STALKERS

23. ROLL CAMERA

24. GEORGE CLOONEY

25. THREE DRUNK MICE

26. SHADOWS IN THE DARK

27. GO GREEK OR GO HOME

28. THE TIDES THROUGH WHICH WE MOVE

29. THE TROPHY

30. ONE MORE RACE

CONCLUSION

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INDEX

“The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage.”

—THUCYDIDES

“It is not Greeks that fight like heroes, but heroes that fight like Greeks.”

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

“Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.”

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

PREFACE

Though not much time has passed, much has changed in the world since the writing of this book, especially in Greece, the Middle East, and Europe. During the telling of my story, I wrote of a troubling immigration problem emerging in Greece, a country ill prepared to deal with such an issue. Since that time the Syrian refugee exodus has exploded into a global crisis, one that frequently dominates front-page news. In a single year that trickle of refugees washing upon the shorelines of Greece has grown into a tidal wave of displaced individuals seeking asylum and a safe haven from the brutal Assad regime.

The other unfortunate occurrence that has unfolded over the past year is the full-fledged collapse of the Greek economy. Things were bad while I was writing this book, but they have deteriorated further since then. The country required emergency bailout funding from its EU creditors, and to receive it accepted harsh austerity measures and crushing societal reforms. No age group has been spared. The younger Greek generation is grappling with 25 percent unemployment, and the aging population is coping with dramatically slashed pensions. Many blame the government and the rich for this, calling for higher taxes on the one percent to fix the problem.

But this is nothing new. I could sense these issues flaring to a flash point during my visits to Greece. The telltale signs were everywhere, if one bothered to look. Yet, to claim that I was among the first to notice would be disingenuous. Plato writes of the biggest threat facing the Republic as that of income inequality. And the Battle of Marathon was about the Greeks trying to preserve their nascent democracy from the crushing tyranny of Persian totalitarianism. These events preceded my observations by roughly 2,500 years.

Perhaps the more startling revelation is that in all this time, not much has truly changed. Income inequality and disparities in wealth distribution are still hot topics, and cruel tyrants continue attempting to repress their people to this very day. Given that 2,500 years haven’t fixed this situation, maybe the government isn’t the problem and higher taxes aren’t the answer. Perhaps instead these issues have more to do with human nature than anything else.

That is one of the key insights I have gleaned from penning this work. No governmental policy will solve the problems we face. Unless we change our fundamental nature, these same issues will persist for another 2,500 years, the Greek theater continuing on for millennia.

Plato foretold of these troubles, but unlike so many of today’s leaders, he also developed a solution that addressed the underlying human condition at its core. In place of stitching together an ineffectual patchwork of laws and legislation, he called for replacing the politicians, policy wonks, and warmongers with thinkers, a measure meant to bring about the enlightenment of humankind rather than imposing more rules to regulate the way we live.

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed of humanity itself, until philosophers become kings in this world,” he wrote.

It’s an interesting proposition. A world guided by philosophers rather than by politicians—interesting, indeed.

I’ll leave it at that.

PROLOGUE

The story you are about to read has waited patiently for 2,500 years to be told. Doggedly persisting within the annals of history for centuries and millennia, the legendary tale of the first marathon has remained resolute in enduring the test of time, untiringly awaiting the splendor of its full revelation.

Anecdotal bits and shards have surfaced throughout the years—most famously the tale of the fabled run by Pheidippides (fye-DIP-ǝ-deez) from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens—but a deeper, more investigative assessment of what truly transpired during this very first marathon has yet to be told in a single, unifying narrative.

Until now.

The saga awaiting you tells the remarkable journey of a single, inspired athletic endeavor that forever preserved the course of humanity, the means by which this tremendous accomplishment was achieved being something that all humans, despite our many differences and disparities, have shared in common since the dawn of antiquity: our ability to put one foot in front of the other, and run.

Gus Gibbs, 1927

1

IMMIGRANT SONG

A hulking figure of a man, both in stature and in character, Gus Gibbs possessed the broad-shouldered physique of a Spartan warrior along with an equally domineering personality to match. Now in his autumn years, Gus was gregarious and spirited, but his life hadn’t always been so carefree. Fifty years earlier, at the fresh age of 14, he’d arrived on American shores with 20 bucks in his pocket and not a word of English in his vocabulary. Since adolescence he’d been forced to fend for himself, alone and in a foreign land.

Enterprising and hardworking, Gus followed his instincts across the country, venturing wherever opportunity could be found and eventually settling on the West Coast, in Los Angeles. There, he met a beautiful young lady, Vasiliki, and they fell madly in love. He couldn’t stand being without her. One night he appeared outside her bedroom window. “Billy, Billy,” he tapped on the pane, “it’s me, Gus. Open up.”

She heard the rapping and slid the window open. “Gus, what are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to take your hand in marriage.”

“But I can’t.”

He was puzzled. “Why? Do you not love me?”

“Yes, I love you deeply.”

“Then why will you not marry me?”

“Because my oldest sister has yet to marry.”

“Oh.” Gus scratched his head as she slid the window shut.

He thought about the situation for a second and then moved over to the adjacent window. He tapped on it, and Eugenia’s face appeared. Gus waved his hand back and forth several times, “Sorry, sorry.” Eugenia was the middle sister.

He moved over one more time and knocked on a third window. Panayota looked out at him.

“Pack your bags,” he told her. “We’re going to get married.”

She did as he asked and then crawled out the window. They eloped to Mexico that night.

Ironically, Panayota’s family (or Patricia, as she was known) had emigrated from a region not far from Gus’s origins. The two of them got along well together. Eventually, they raised a family of three children.

As the years passed, Gus invested his earnings from the restaurant business into acquiring rental properties, eventually building a portfolio sufficient to provide for his family and live a comfortable life in the flourishing metropolis of LA. A proud man who had come from nothing, it was quite gratifying to him to have created such a stable foundation for himself and his loved ones—the American dream come true.

Yet, despite all that he’d accomplished and everything he’d achieved, Gus remained perpetually restless. An incessant fire burned within the man. To him, it always seemed there was more that could be done; there were greater challenges still to be conquered. He would not permit himself to stop or to slow down, perpetually resisting any temptation to rest. His philosophy was: Show me a man who is content, and I will show you an underachiever. Gus was never quite satisfied with his place in the world. He was constantly striving to do more and to be more, though he wasn’t always quite sure how to go about it.

Some of this pent-up ferocity was released through participation in sports and athletics. An avid wrestler, Gus dabbled in the professional arena back in an era when wrestling was a more noble pursuit. Athleticism was important in his ancient culture, and those virtues stuck with him even in America. His opponents used to say that getting in the ring with Gus was like wrestling Hercules. He earned a reputation for being a mighty fighter, fearless, even when taking on opponents twice his size. His colossal chest and huge arms were imposing enough, but his legs, especially his calves, were so shockingly overdeveloped that Gus often had to have the legs of his trousers widened to fit over his calves.

Because he remained physically active throughout his life, the years had been mostly kind to him. Bronze-skinned and chisel-cheeked, with a full head of wavy, silver hair, Gus looked the part of a Hollywood movie star. But like many immigrants, his diet had progressively shifted from one of lean meats and freshly harvested vegetables to one of heavily fatted, fried, and overly salted foods. It was the American way. And besides, it tasted better.

Returning home one bright and sunny afternoon, he burst through the front door and lightheartedly called out, “Patricia! Where is my lovely bride?”

It was a jovial, good-natured call he routinely sang out upon returning home, even though they’d been married for 32 years. Despite decades together, Gus still maintained a playful side. After all, wasn’t that what life was about? No amount of hard work could dampen this spirit; every glorious day was cause for celebration. This is what he’d been taught as a boy. It was the way of the land he had come from before arriving in America.

Suddenly, something peculiar occurred. The muscles in his left arm started pulsing rather strangely. Gus cocked his head—what was this? The sensation quickly spread to his neck, and then farther up to his jaw. He stood silently, attempting to appraise the situation. Rather abruptly, his arm went entirely numb. He shook it several times, but the feeling did not return. What was this?

In that instant a crushing tightness squeezed his chest, as though an opponent in the wrestling ring had him in a body lock. The iron grip became so constrictive he could barely breathe. Staggering to reach the kitchen, he dropped to one knee. Gus was not a man to be seen on his knees. He thrust his arm upward in an attempt to grab the counter for stability, but his mighty arm did not cooperate, and he crumpled downward.

Now he was furious. “Arm, work!” he roared. “Do not forsake me arm; work!”

Blood coursed through his body in anger, but still there was no response from his arm. He would have none of this. He would not have his wife find him lying in an undignified heap on the kitchen floor as though pinned and defeated by a rival. This had never happened to him in the ring, and he would not permit it to happen to him now.

“If you do not lift me, arm, I will cut you off,” he shouted. “Now, WORK!”

But his arm would not respond. He could not pry himself off the ground.

The door to the kitchen swung open. Patricia had heard the commotion and dashed in to see what was going on. She found him lying on the ground.

“Gus! What is happening?” She knew right away that something was terribly amiss.

“Patricia,” he snarled, nostrils flaring, “bring me a knife!”

She looked down at him, quizzically. His request confused her. Patricia was a slight woman, of fair olive skin and light hazel eyes. Their union had begun as a convoluted one—after all, he had originally fallen in love with her youngest sister—though she had always found him quite handsome, albeit a bit gruff and unrefined. No matter, she had sensed that their relationship would endure despite their unexpected union, and her intuition had been true. They’d been happily married since the day she crawled out her bedroom window.

Gus broke the silence. “Bring me a knife, I tell you. I must cut off my arm!”

Now she was concerned. She slowly stepped back. “I . . . am . . .”

Walking backward, still staring down at him in grave concern, she said, “I am calling for help.”

“There’s no need for that!” he yelled, eyebrows furrowed in rage. “Just do as I ask. Bring me a knife and I will cut off this uncooperative arm, and we can go about our day.”

She started to tremble. Distraught, she didn’t know what to do, which wasn’t like her. She always knew what to do, how to handle things. But this was different. Her husband’s neck was growing increasingly purple, and the discoloration was spreading upward toward his face. Something was horribly wrong.

“Come to me, darling,” he requested, in a tone that was now softer and more tender. What? She’d never heard such passive words coming from her husband’s lips. “Come, hold me,” he pleaded.

Never had she seen her husband scared before. Never had he allowed himself to display any overt sign of weakness. His ancestral pride would not permit such. She knelt down next to him, and he noticed that she was whimpering.

“Just hold me,” he said. After 32 years of marriage, those were the final words exchanged between them before his body went limp.

So ended the life of Gus Gibbs. Just like that, 64 years of highs and lows, good times and bad, dreams realized and dashed, all came to an abrupt conclusion. The death certificate following the autopsy listed occlusive coronary artery disease as the cause, a heart attack. It was an all-too-common affliction cast upon those who’d adopted the new American diet, with its greasy fast food and other unhealthy offerings. Fatty deposits of plaque had literally blocked his arteries.

The only peculiarity on the death certificate was that it didn’t list his name as Gus Gibbs, but instead as Constantine Nicholas Karnazes. Like many foreigners concerned about potentially suffering the stigma that attaches to recent immigrants, he’d chosen an alias in an effort to assimilate more smoothly. Why do I know all of this? I know it because Gus Gibbs was my namesake, my grandfather.

Grandfather Constantine carrying me outside Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Church, Los Angeles, 1964

2

WHO AM I?

My name is Constantine Nicholas Karnazes, son of Nicholas Constantine Karnazes, grandson of Constantine Nicholas Karnazes (aka Gus Gibbs), and so forth and so on throughout the ages. My grandfather’s family raised goats in a little village called Silimna, located high in the hills above Tripoli on the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece. It was a tough existence, which in turn bred tough and resilient people. These are the origins of my paternal bloodline.

The other half of my DNA traces its lineage to the sun-drenched Greek island of Ikaria, situated in the Aegean Sea far from the mainland, a world unto itself. My maternal roots are here, in this unhurried place where food is harvested fresh from the land and neighbors are like family. In Ikaria simple pleasures still bring much joy, stress is unheard of, deadlines are wobbly, and the inhabitants live long, healthy lives. One of the famed Blue Zones, Ikaria has the highest concentration of centenarians on earth. It is an island, it’s been said, where people forget to die.

My mother’s lineage was never lost on her, even though we lived in LA. From the day I was born, we would spend sunup till sundown wandering around outside, seeing the sights, smelling the smells, walking through the park, talking to people along the way, and beholding the cycles of the seasons, just as her forebears had done on the misty blue islands of the Aegean in ancient times. Sometimes she would carry pruning shears and collect fruit and greens for dinner. I couldn’t have known these things at the time, given that I was an infant being pushed around in a stroller, but perhaps these early childhood experiences seeped into my bloodstream, for starting at a young age I began to manifest a rather strong yearning for adventure and a strange penchant for endurance and self-discipline.

Some of my earliest childhood recollections, in fact, are of sitting quietly in the oversize cathedral of Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Church in Los Angeles listening to an exhaustive Divine Liturgy, largely delivered in Greek, punctuated with endless refrains of “Kyrie eleison” (Lord, have mercy), always thrice repeated with the final verse delivered slower, more deliberately and drawn out, “Kee-ree-ay e-le-eesawn . . .” as if to be saying, “Okay, Lord, we really mean it this time; have some mercy, will ya please?!” Get a Greek Orthodox bishop going, and you could spend all day and much of the night in church. Endurance events in their own right, these sermons were not known for their brevity.

Yet I would sit there attentively for hours, even as I watched others slouching over and falling asleep in the pews. Many people used to tell my parents that I, the oldest of three children, was going to be a priest one day. But the truth was, I had little interest in the sermon itself (what 5-year-old boy could even understand this stuff?). What intrigued me was exercising my ability to hold steady and keep myself still and attentive while sitting assiduously through something I barely understood, hour after droning hour. I had a deep desire to master my body and mind, and sitting idly within the church’s sacred nave while engaged in protracted liturgical worship was the acid test of willpower and self-command. Above all, having complete discipline of mind and body mattered most to this 5-year-old.

One of my other early memories was that of our Easter Picnic festivities. Greek Orthodox Easter was, from what I could tell, just an excuse to throw one enormous party. Never had I witnessed so much wine, raucousness, and love all taking place in a single location. The quantities of food and celebration were beyond imagination, but what really struck me were the older Greek gentlemen dancing endlessly without rest or tiring. Most of them were recent arrivals from the old country, Greek immigrants whose children and grandchildren had migrated to America and then imported them over to the United States at a later date. These men were distinctive in the way they looked, dressed, and behaved. They seemed less interested in food and social carousing and more interested in moving with incredible form and exquisite mastery to the rhythmic sounds of the Hellenic Tunes, a local Greek band that strummed eight-string bouzoukis and tapped rousing chromatic riffs on the ancient santuri. These instruments didn’t just play music; they infused passion directly into your soul.

Most of the men from the old country were in remarkable shape, lean and fit, with beautifully preserved olive skin and heads full of peppery gray hair. Their faces were chiseled and taut, and they danced with whomever would dance with them, even by themselves when everybody else tired. These were hardy men, resilient and self-reliant, wise in the ways of the world, men who had endured hardship and struggle in the old country far beyond anything their American-bred offspring would ever encounter. Their movements were expressive and stirring. They would dance the zeïbekiko, the hasapiko, and the pentozali, pure emotion bleeding onto the dance floor.

In between sets of music, when the band would take a break, I would watch as they exchanged shots of a clear liquid from little glasses, sometimes hoisting these oversize thimbles into the air and cheering “Opa!” before consuming. I later learned that these glasses were filled with an aperitif known as ouzo, or the stronger distillate called tsipouro, unless they were Cretans, in which case they’d drink raki. When the band gathered the energy to resume playing, these men were always the first to head back out onto the dance floor, never stopping, never tiring.

Our family would often leave near midnight, and the only remaining groups of people at the festival were these old Greek men, still dancing as though the party had just begun. The band had long since stopped, and now it was just a scratchy prerecorded sound track playing over the speakers, but the men didn’t slow down. Their endurance was extraordinary.

Why I would remember these particular things as a child, I do not know. But those indefatigable dancing Greek men would stick with me forever.

Another lasting childhood memory was that of a footrace during my kindergarten year. It was an all-school affair that pitted the children in my grade against the older kids in the first and second grades. Judging from my experience during free play at recess, I knew that I wasn’t the swiftest kid around, as other boys and girls could routinely outsprint me. But this was a contest of four laps around the schoolyard, not a quick dash.

The starting gun sounded and off we went. Most kids darted out at a full sprint pace, racing as though they were running a 100-yard dash, not four laps. By the end of the first lap, I was somewhere in the middle of the pack.

By the end of the second lap, many of the initial sprinters were complaining that the race was too long. But the teachers kept telling them it was four laps and to keep going. Most of them quit or started walking.

By the end of the third lap, nearly all of the kids were walking from exhaustion or sitting on the sidelines. But I just kept chugging along, not really paying attention to my position because there were still so many kids in front of me. I was one of the youngest out there, and I remember weaving in and out among the much taller kids as though running through a forest of trees.

Come the fourth lap, something remarkable occurred. Daylight emerged between the trees as I passed the final competitor. Amazingly, I found myself in front of everyone and leading the race. This struck me as odd; it was hardly the outcome I’d expected. Even more startling, I still had lots of energy left. I just kept running along, not feeling tired at all.

I came across the finish line a full half lap ahead of the nearest rival. Not once had I slowed or walked. I just kept going at a steady clip throughout the full duration of the race, and I felt like I could have kept going even after crossing the finish line.

The teachers didn’t seem to make much of my victory, at least initially. They simply congratulated me and then went about corralling all of the other kids back into their classrooms. Later that day, however, I started to notice some teachers having side conversations and then glancing my way. I could tell they were talking about me, but I didn’t know what they were saying. This kept happening throughout the afternoon, and I started to think that perhaps they were saying something good, something positive. I sensed they might have actually been stirred by what they’d witnessed that day on the playground. That was my first inclination that running held the power to move people in unexpected ways. Even though there wasn’t much to it, running inspired.

Not that it really mattered to me. Sure, I’d won the race, but running laps around the playground didn’t particularly interest me. What I really loved was running home after school. This was where true freedom could be found. The heck with running around in circles within the confines of some fenced-off, man-made institution; real adventure took place outside the school walls. Running through the park, chasing the ducks around the lake, breathing the fresh air blowing in off the Pacific, marveling at the great expanses before me, this was the stuff of life. A man’s education shouldn’t be limited to a classroom, not even at 6 years old—especially not at 6 years old.

Why is it that these thoughts and experiences were some of my earliest childhood recollections? Nature or nurture, it remains anybody’s guess. Perhaps we really were born to run, as some have suggested, and certain people feel the pull of this primordial instinct more strongly than others. Whatever the case may be, an adventurous wanderlust seemed hardwired into my genetic constitution, a by-product of my ancestry, perhaps. And so I grew up exploring freely and, in doing so, discovered that my own two feet could carry me wherever I wanted to go.

“Perhaps you’ll run a marathon, like Pheidippides,” my dad once said to me.

“Who?”

“Pheidippides, the ancient Greek messenger who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to announce victory.”

“Wow, that seems like a long way.”

“He ran over 25 miles, and then he died.”

“But he still delivered his message, right?”

“Yes,” my father chuckled, “he still delivered his message.”

It was a profound revelation. A man, a sacred Greek messenger, a runner just like me, had collapsed to the ground dead from exhaustion, but only after having fulfilled his life’s duty. In my young heart’s zeal, I could think of no more honorable way to go. From that moment on I knew my life’s purpose. I wanted to be as Pheidippides. I wanted to run a marathon.

3

FIELDS OF FENNEL

Marathon. It is a word with universal recognition, though no universal meaning. Few people know the origin of the word, while even fewer know the secret truths behind the reality of Pheidippides’s heroic undertaking. When asked the definition of marathon, most people would probably tell you it means anything of excruciatingly long duration requiring great endurance of its participants. For instance, we have marathon sessions of Congress, dance-a-thons, marathon episodes of The Simpsons, marathon lines around the block when Apple releases a new iPhone, and marathon traffic delays during rush-hour commutes. None of these answers would be correct, however. Those in the know would tell you that the definition of the word is a 26.2-mile footrace. But even they would be wrong.

The literal translation of the word marathon is: “a place full of fennel” (yes, that same aromatic herb you enjoy sautéed with vegetables, tossed in salads, or roasted alongside leg of lamb). Why fennel? Because when the invading Persian military forces landed on the shorelines of Greece in 490 BCE, they encountered a massive field of fennel. It is here that the Battle of Marathon took place. And that is the true etymology of the word—field of fennel. So I guess all those bumper stickers on athletes’ vehicles displaying 26.2 should actually be changed to read Fennel.

While the genesis of the word is rather entertaining, the occasion itself is a bit more poignant. In fact, historians have called the Battle of Marathon one of the most significant events in the course of human history, for the very shape and form of our modern world depended upon its outcome. Had the invading Persian forces defeated the Greeks at Marathon, the evolution of Western society would have been inexorably altered. The impact of this confrontation cannot be overstated given that it occurred during a most fragile juncture in the blossoming of contemporary human civilization. Our very existence hung in the balance.

As military historian Edward S. Creasy wrote in his book, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World:

The day of Marathon is the critical epoch in the history of the two nations. It broke forever the spell of Persian invincibility, which had paralysed men’s minds. . . . It secured for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions, the liberal enlightenment of the Western world, and the gradual ascendancy for many ages of the great principles of European civilisation.

If the Battle of Marathon holds such weight, then it may not be overreaching to consider the feat of a single runner the greatest athletic achievement of all time. Indeed, had Pheidippides failed in his conquest, the Battle of Marathon would have almost certainly concluded differently and the history books been eternally rewritten. Few people realize that the footsteps of an ancient Athenian hemerodromos1 (daylong runner) essentially preserved the fate of modern culture and forever influenced the values and way of life we know today. All of this because of a single runner; and all of this because of a single long-distance run.

The Battle of Marathon is one of history’s earliest recorded military clashes, and the valiant drama of a single lone runner stands enduringly as one of the greatest physical accomplishments ever. The story of Pheidippides is one of the first known references to athleticism beyond sport, his long-distance run being notable not only in duration and expediency, but in heroism.

And, most remarkably, it all took place 2,500 years ago, long before the rise of energy gels, sports drinks, and medial posts on highly cushioned footwear. The vision of a lone runner making his way from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to deliver news of the Greek victory, chest heaving mightily, armor shimmering brightly in the radiant Mediterranean sun, powerful legs thrusting forward, running with the hope of saving all of Greece and forever preserving democratic principles, was just the sort of oversize romantic fodder my young heart needed to ignite a passion. I was Greek, and running was something that brought with it great pride. I saw no higher calling.

Following that enlightened conversation with my father about Pheidippides’s untimely but glorious death, I continued running right up to my freshman year of high school when I joined the San Clemente Tritons cross-country team. We runners were a grungy lot, free-spirited and aloof. People thought we were either really cool or really weird, and I guess we were a bit of both.

Although the race distances we competed in were fairly short in duration—typically 2.3 to 2.7 miles—we sometimes ran 70 or 80 miles a week in training. Not because we had to, but because we loved to.

My history teacher, Benner Cummings, was our cross-country coach. Benner was an interesting character, more of a mentor sage than a hard-nosed drill instructor. He referred to some of us stouter, sturdier runners on the team as “hillmen,” because we specialized in conquering the hills. Calling me a hillman was Benner’s subtle way of explaining to me that I was too slow to keep pace with the lankier sprinters, but that when the going got tough, when the incline steepened and the rocks and roots chewed men alive, I would excel.

Humble and unassuming, Benner was much the Socratic figure. One of the greatest thinkers of all time, Socrates once denounced, “I know nothing except the fact that I know nothing.” Not formally trained as a coach, Benner claimed to know nothing, but he taught us everything.

“Run with your hearts and the body will follow,” Benner used to tell us. Some of the parents were growing concerned about the high mileage we were racking up each week. Listen to your heart, Benner counseled. If the heart grows weary and uninspired, stop. If the heart remains impassioned and burning with desire, go. It was a simple philosophy, one that made sense to me. My heart was ablaze, so I went with it.

Being inherently drawn to extremes, I did something many thought was truly crazy during that first year of high school. Looking back on it, perhaps they were right.

Our school’s annual fundraiser that year was an organized run around the high school track. The idea was for us students to solicit pledges for each lap we completed. A typical donor pledged a dollar per lap. If you were able to garner 10 donors, then you would be raising $10 per lap. Run five laps, and you’d be raising a total of $50 in donations. Not bad. But complete 10 laps, and you’d raise $100, which was even better (of course, running 10 laps wasn’t easy). The donations raised went toward funding the school’s library. This was a cause near and dear to my heart because my mom was a schoolteacher and always stressed the importance of reading and open access to books and literature. The library was an important place of learning to me, and I didn’t just want it to survive, I wanted it to thrive.

Each lap around the track was a standard quarter-mile. Some students were able to complete those 10 laps and raise an amazing $100 for the school library. A couple students managed to go even farther and run 20 laps, raising a hefty $200. One student was able to cover a remarkable 40 laps—10 full miles—raising $400 for the library!

I ran 105 laps. Yes, I raised the most money of anyone and made my mother proud, which was all well and good, but in the process of doing so I accomplished something even grander: I fulfilled my life’s promise. You see, the total mileage covered during that intrepid gallivant around the high school track was the equivalent of a marathon. At 14 years of age my mission had been realized. I had become one with Pheidippides.

It took its toll on me. Completing that marathon wasn’t easy. In fact, it was the toughest thing I’d ever done. Running 70 to 80 miles over the course of a week was one thing, but running 26.25 sustained miles in a single go was an altogether different proposition. There was pain. Avalanches of it, coming in sporadic waves and unpredictable pulses. Sometimes the pounding was acute and specific, as though a wooden mallet was repeatedly striking my kneecaps. Other times it was diffused and ephemeral, as if all of my cells were screaming out in concurrent agony, from the balls of my feet to the very tip of my nose. The pain also brought with it bouts of gut-wrenching nausea. Stop, my body kept telling me. Give up. This is too much. The mental battle was every bit as daunting as the physical one, a raw confrontation with self.

Friends and outsiders who had taken an interest in my endeavor surrounded me, so I did my best to put up a cheerful facade. But my struggles to persist must have been obvious to them; the internal strife was palpable and impossible to conceal. Feelings of self-doubt and doom were often followed by great waves of elation, as though I could run forever, only to shortly thereafter be overtaken by further rounds of darker, more disconcerting emotions. There were several points during the later stages of the run when my mind seemed to disassociate entirely from my body, and a peculiar numbness spread over me like a dense, halcyon haze. These moments were not entirely disagreeable. In fact, I felt almost nothing at such points. All sense of time and place became distorted as though I’d crossed into a new dimension, some sort of foggy parallel universe where things didn’t present as crisply and well defined as they do here on earth. Then someone would hoot or yell my name, and I’d be abruptly transmuted back to reality, bringing with it more pain and an unsettling queasiness deep within my bowels.

No wonder Pheidippides died, I thought to myself. Those final few steps toward the finish of the 105th lap brought with them a torrent of emotions. There were euphoria and jubilation as people cheered, clapped, and slapped me on the back in congratulatory attaboys as I wobbled by, but there were also intermittent pulses of pain and mind-bending tenderness in my muscles and joints so severe that they threatened to topple me like a domino at any instant. And finally, there was a profound sense of satisfaction in having accomplished what I’d set out to do.

These deep feelings of accomplishment represented one side of the emotional equation; the other side was an almost infinite sense of relief. As my friend’s mother dropped me off in front of my house and I said goodbye and shut the car door, the main thought I had at that moment was, “Thank God it’s over.”

I couldn’t imagine taking another step beyond a marathon. But I would never have to. My conquest was complete and I could now rejoice and relax. I’d done it; I’d completed a marathon. There was nothing left to prove. All was good.

But the contentment in having fulfilled my destiny was surprisingly short-lived. Things move quickly in high school, and soon the exultation of having run a marathon was replaced by an overwhelming sense of What’s next? By the conclusion of cross-country season, the fire in my belly had all but extinguished. Benner retired as our coach, and the motivation to keep running just wasn’t there. Growing up near the beach in Southern California provided plenty of alternative activities. Surfing and volleyball became some of my pursuits, as did lifeguarding. I had nothing left to prove in running, so I hung up my running shoes—quite literally, by flinging them high into a tree branch—and moved on. Just as Pheidippides had died a noble death on the steps of the Acropolis, my life as a runner lofted away heavenward on the limbs of that tree.

Once a runner I may have been. But that was then. Now was a time to move on.

Off to the land down under

____________

1 Pronounced HEE-mer-O-drome-mos. The plural is hemerodromoi.

4

UNITED BY CALVES

Though running had exited my life, I still remained restless with an insatiable wanderlust and never-ending thirst for adventure. During my junior year of high school, I relocated to Sydney, Australia, as an American Field Service exchange student. Sure, I wanted to be a global ambassador and spread goodwill across borders, but mostly I wanted to pursue my new life’s passion, surfing.

Australia is well known for some of the best breakers on earth, and it was the vision of riding the perfect wave that truly fueled my fire. I made it a point to attend school and be a good citizen when the surf wasn’t up. But when it was, school became optional. I had my priorities squarely aligned.

The laid-back Aussie lifestyle suited me perfectly. My schoolmates were a hoot. The teenage Australian vernacular suffixed everyone’s given identity with an o. For instance, Johnny Phillips was Johnno, David Smith was Davo, and Daniel Wojciechowski was Waddo. I was Karno (no one could ever properly pronounce my surname anyway, so it was just as well they called me Karno).

Endless days were spent laughing, surfing, and hanging out at the pub, an Australian institution where young men were taught the finer things in life, like choosing the best ales, picking a balanced pool cue, and throwing a straight dart. I hadn’t a care in the world. Life was pretty much perfect. Until one day I got a strange phone call.

The voice on the other end was shaky and trembling. “Is this . . . Constantine Karnazes?”

Nobody called me Constantine in those days. My Greekness had long since departed. I was Dean. Or better, Karno.

“Yeah, this is Constantine Karnazes. Who might this be?”

There was a moment of silence in which I thought I heard muffled weeping and muted sobs, then the caller regained her composure, “We would like to meet.”

Okay, who is this weirdo? I thought. And how did they get my number?

We hung up. The next day officials from the American Field Service headquarters contacted me. They explained that if such a meeting were to occur, representatives from AFS would accompany me. I agreed to the meeting, even though I wasn’t sure whom it was I’d be meeting. It was like being a character in a surreal Kafka novel in which an important meeting is arranged but the party’s identity remains a mystery. What happened next blew my mind.

Australia has some remarkable eateries, and at the time one of them happened to be a 360-degree revolving restaurant atop the Sydney Tower. It offered (and still offers) stunning views in every direction as you dine. As I walked past the buffet table, the smorgasbord of food was astonishing and the aromas were intoxicating. I couldn’t wait to rip into some of those fancy meat dishes and gourmet cheeses. It was hard not to salivate in anticipation as we strode by. My hope was that this meeting would end quickly so we could roll up our sleeves and get down to eating.

As we approached our designated table, I could see three women awaiting our arrival. One of them was older, most likely in her seventies, with frosted, wavy hair and deep brown eyes. The other two bore a striking resemblance to each other. All of them were nicely clad and neatly groomed. I wore my standard attire: T-shirt, grungy surf trunks, and flip-flops.

When we reached the tableside, the older lady’s eyes grew wide, and it appeared she was trembling. I tried not to take notice, but there was uneasiness in the way she stared at me and carefully watched my every movement, assessing, evaluating, and analyzing, as if looking for clues. Who were these people, and what did they want with me?

We sat down together, and a dizzying exchange of introductions and formalities ensued. Eventually the handshakes, name verifications, and ID checks concluded, and the officials who’d escorted me to the meeting politely excused themselves.

Now I was sitting alone with these three women, partitioned from the world in an awkward cell of silence. The older woman continued inspecting me with her eyes, as if searching for some meaning in a piece of art. Finally, the tension was interrupted. One of the two younger women spoke. Her voice was genial; her words were warm and articulate, soothing and disarming. She explained to me that we were related, somehow, some way. Things got progressively hazy from there. It wasn’t that her explanation lacked clarity, but that my mind was awhirl with thoughts. She spoke in a rambling stream of consciousness about relationships, connections, coincidences, and family ties that all somehow related back to me, but her words streamed past me in a three-dimensional ticker tape of undecipherable code. The restaurant was spinning around in circles, and so was my head. Categorization is what I needed, hierarchy, some anchor of understanding to serve as a foundation for this tangled web of interrelationships that she was revealing. Her lips moved, but what came out was a mystifying cascade of names, pedigree, links, and associations like biblical gibberish. It was clear she held the advantage of time and perspective to piece this intricate chain of events together. But I had no such prior knowledge.

And so I sat there in a clueless fog.

“May I ask about your grandfather?”

Suddenly I was jolted from my daze. “My grandfather?”

They seemed surprised at how this question jostled me back to the present. “Yes, your father’s father.”

I thought about this for a while. As I did, I noticed the older lady sitting upright, attentively leaning forward seemingly readying to lurch ahead. She was clutching a handkerchief and kept rubbing it through her fingers. The other two glanced at her with that subtle look you give someone as a helpful reminder to remain composed and show restraint. Still, she hung on my every word.

“I didn’t know him very well,” I said. “He died when I was a young boy.”

My words were a dagger to her heart. A flood of emotions exploded upon her aging face, and tears poured forth in watery, sobering moans of sorrow and pain. She clasped her hands to her chest and looked skyward, columns of moisture streaming down each tanned cheek. Her two companions moved closer, and the three of them hugged and wept, trying to console one another and somehow conceal this outward display of grief.

What had I done? What had I said?

I felt at once both a great desire to escape from this place and return to my familiar daily routine as if none of this had happened, and also a strange sense of providence as though being here was somehow part of my destiny. Of course, I also felt their pain; it was impossible not to. We were connected in some way, apparently, flesh and blood, and I couldn’t simply bear witness to their anguish without feeling some shared sense of sadness myself. If I were somehow the conduit to this serendipitous reunion, then I bore a certain responsibility to surrender myself to faith and put aside my reluctance to engage in this public display of raw emotion. So I slid around the table and embraced them, becoming one with their heartache.

This is how I came to know my great aunt Helen, my grandfather’s sister, and her daughters, Mary and Sophia, my cousins.

We met on many occasions during the course of my 1-year stay in the land down under, and every meeting was similar to the first. Helen would break down in tears, making the sign of the cross on her chest over and over, and we would all try to console her. She would often hold me, just hold on to my arm, the entire time I was with her. She would touch my face, rubbing her fingers along my cheeks and down my chin in a show of affection and a desire to gain a deeper familiarity with my constitution than words could convey. At first I found this practice weird—hell, it was weird, but not in her time and place. People outwardly expressed their feelings and emotions where she came from. There was none of this staunchly puritanical reserve and stiff-upper-lip mentality of modern Anglo society. People had no such hangups in her world; if you felt strongly about someone, you let it show. You didn’t repress your feelings and emotions in the old country, and her emotional range was quite broad. She could just as easily shift from wallowing in tears of sorrow to thunderous outbursts of laughter to deep, reflective contemplation. She was, as the Greeks say, polytropos (a person of many twists and turns, moods and emotions). Over time I came to better understand these odd behaviors, if not fully appreciate them. They provided a richer insight into who my grandfather was and, by association, who I was.

The story of how this all came to be was quite remarkable. Helen was just 5 years old when her brother, Constantine Nicholas Karnazes, left Greece, though she remembered him quite fondly. My grandfather (aka Gus) was the oldest child in the family, and the only male. Helen was the youngest of four girls. Constantine used to chase them around the village, playing hide-and-seek with them for hours on end. They had pet goats, and she remembered him showing her how to milk one. Their mother used to make cheese out of this milk, feta cheese.

After young Gus departed for America in hopes of seeking a more prosperous life in which he could better help support his family back in the homeland, his letters arrived only sporadically, if at all. Mail service to the little village in the hills of Greece where my family came from was intermittent and unreliable. They knew that he’d arrived safely in New York City, clearing customs at Ellis Island in 1913, but his whereabouts grew progressively vague as time passed. He moved about the country, sending money when he could, but oftentimes his letters never arrived. Eventually they lost contact completely. Helen vowed to someday reconnect with her long-lost brother. That was her dream.

Eventually she relocated across the Mediterranean to Egypt, married, and raised two beautiful daughters. She and her husband built quite a prosperous empire before being forced to flee the country in exile after the Six Day War, when the Nasser regime took control of the country. They lost everything and sought refuge in Australia, as did many Greeks, I came to learn.

Helen thought about her brother often over the years, but these were the days before Facebook and the Internet. Electronic mail didn’t exist. As dreams of meeting went unfulfilled, his status became progressively less and less certain. Until someone recognized my calves.

Yes, my calves. Word circulated in the Greek-Aussie community that someone spotted a boy with Karnazes-like calves. Mary traced the lead to the Sydney Morning Herald, where a story had been published about my coming to Australia as part of the American Field Service high school ambassador program. And that is how my Greek family found me. This enchanting series of events was both magical, in that we were reunited with long-lost relatives whose whereabouts had been unknown for years, and tragic, in that I brought with me news of my grandfather’s passing. It was also quite outrageous, in that all of this came to be because of an outsize set of calf muscles.