And what if we tried once to "run like the ancient Greeks"? Whether we love running or not, one thing is certain. Everything has changed from the time of Pheidippides until today - technology, politics, science, war, the way we write, travel, even the climate - but two things have not changed: our muscles and those cursed 41.8 kilometers that separate the Marathon from the Acropolis of Athens. Exactly what I intend to run.

Why do we run? Why so much effort, so much fatigue? What does this continuous effort to build a muscular body, with toil and sweat, say about us? Once again, we must go back in time, to the ancient Greeks, the first ones who wondered why we test ourselves and compete with others. The famous saying "a healthy mind in a healthy body" summarizes the importance that the ancients attributed to these trials, which is why the period of the Olympic Games was the only one in which all hostilities ceased. Andrea Marcolongo, having spent years immersed in books and grammar, studying "how the Greeks thought," began to train by trying to "run like the ancient Greeks." She did this using as a tool the first manual on sports ever written, "De arte gymnastica" (On Gymnastics) by the philosopher Philostratus. To finally reach the crazy decision: to run the classic route of the marathon, from Marathon to Athens, just as Pheidippides ran two and a half thousand years ago, before shouting "Nenikikamen" and falling unconscious to the ground.