Beginnings

Athens FSG – inspired by Adam Friberg’s spontaneous purchase of cheap Ryanair tickets in November, 2018, and continuous solicitation to come (please!) join him – finally yielded four troops in total:  The captain and co-founder Adam, the playwright Jon, the geological maestro Ale, and the blockchain expert David, a motley band of endurance brothers.  It was also my (David’s) 42^nd birthday, and what better way to celebrate 42 years, then to run 42 km from the original town of Marathon.

The trip officially began the minute our Ryanair flight landed in Athens with our very own driver, sporting a ‘Welcome FSG’ sign.  Greece we soon realized was a friendly place, exhibited by its native taxi-drivers, faux-famous chefs, and famous-famous gods.  We conspired in the airport taxi, deciding which mountains we would humble the next day on our proposed marathon from Marathon.  20 minutes later, we pulled into our Airbnb and found it be surprisingly epic.  Expectations were low from our last FSG adventure in Malta, where the 7^th Heaven proved to be a spartan hostel at best above the disco inferno of Paceville. Our Athens Airbnb was in a different class of star-system, two spanking clean bathrooms, three bedrooms, and very likely no 4 am foot traffic.

Drawing rooms, Adam and Ale ended up sharing a room, while Jon and I got the luxury of our own.  After coming to terms with the solar panel heating system, we struck out for some food at the one and only Liondi Traditional Greek Restaurant, smack in the middle of a restaurant red-light district, where servers prostituted their wares to passers-by like grizzled carneys, enticing anyone to come by.  The restaurant bouncer welcomed us, a heavily mustached man with a leather jacket doing his best Sopranos expression.  Head-chef Stavros, a world-renowned chef-trainer took our orders.  Stavros claimed to have single handedly started the Taste of the Danforth festival in Toronto, had been a personal chef to Jeremy Irons, and was ‘all over the internet’, if you just ‘looked him up’.

Stavros seemed to have what we coined ‘TripAdvisor Forum fame’, notoriety achieved by many people writing on the internet exactly what was told to them, creating a very efficient parrot machine.  That and the idea of a world-renowned chef working on a tourist strip full of carney maître d’s, made us slightly suspicious of Stavros’ true fame.  We went to bed with Mousakka Movements in our stomachs, preparing for the next day’s grueling challenges.

The marathon from Marathon

The day broke at 7:30 am, and we commenced with our first mission – shooting drone shots of us running around the Acropolis, a mere 300 meters from our Airbnb.    Acropolis was a massive Greek temple site, that we had all to ourselves in the early morning.  After flying our drone quasi-illegally over top of the temple, we did some Greek temple parkour, where Jon successfully managed to not injure himself.  We then caught our taxi to Marathon, a 60 minute taxi-drive, or mere 8 hour return run away. 

Arriving in Marathon we prepped at the appropriately named Marathon Café.  Both Adam and John ordered double espressos despite my warnings that doubling down on espresso before a run was the best way to excavate mousakka.  Jon charmed his way into the Marathon Museum, where we learned the Olympic history of the Marathon, and watched a movie about the original Greek legend Pheidippides.  History says Pheidippides ran from the town of Marathon all the way to Athens to announce the news of the tiny Athenian army routing the Persians.  As the movie juxtaposed the lone warrior Pheidippides drinking from streams, with marathon runners drinking from aid-station plastic cups (suggesting that somehow one was like the other) we concluded that Pheidippides must have taken the most direct path back to Athens – up and over the 1000 meter Mount Pentelicus, famous for its pentellic marble and as we would soon find out, bermuda triangle underbrush.

The first 5 km of the newly christened FSG marathon from Marathon, was along the classic (i.e. false) route until we diverged to ascend the (true) mountain-route.  We passed the Marathon battle museum, ascending up and above the Marathon valley, where warm weather forced us to strip down to our collector’s edition FSG basketball jerseys. Peeking at 500 meters, we then descended down into the Dinoysous pass, where we made the strategic decision to make our way adjacent to the true pass (a pass of a pass on the Marathon marathon).  It was here, turning onto a trail leading to one of Mount Pentelicus’ famous marble quarries, that the real race began.

“That’s a trail?  I never would have seen that, great spotting Dave” – Jonny Fitchett (2:00 pm)

“This trail is quite overgrown” – Jonny Fitchett (2:01 pm)

“This is definitely not a trail’ – Jonny Fitchett (2:02 pm)

“Where the hell did everyone else go” – Jonny Fitchett (2:05 pm)

The trail was simultaneously faint enough to justify its existence, but questionable enough to deny it.  Five minutes in, we were in the middle of a Borneo forest plantation of wild, ragged bush that sank its teeth into our legs, creating a lattice of pain.

We surfaced at the top of a ridge, but then descended into another impassible pit of dragon foliage, which even Ale’s Rambo-like hacking couldn’t penetrate.  Watching the sun get lower in the sky, contemplating how far we actually were from anything resembling mousakka (notwithstanding early morning excavations), we pinned our hopes on an abandoned set of boards, that led us to an abandoned quarry, where, seeing the pain forest come into view again, decided to abandon ship, and instead focus on climbing off-trail.  We made a plan to go straight up, hoisting and maneuvering along rocks, until we emerged onto an autostrada trail, that was waiting 100 meters directly above us.

Gathering ourselves, with only two hours before darkness, we pressed forward with new found energy and resolve, zig-zagging up the mountain, until finally Athens emerged like a long lost relative.   We descended down into the charming but dog-infested village of Nea Penteli, where we re-filled at a local tavern.

I strapped on my headlamp and together we ran as one, descending down into the streets of Athens’ outer suburbs.  The cars whipped by on major streets, as we became an animalistic wolf-pack pounding pavement, stopping only at a pastry shop where we gorged on eclairs, baklava, and what looked like 50 pounds of cocaine, but which may also have been icing sugar.

End-game

Running now on a gentle downward slope, we suddenly heard an ‘Ugh’, followed by growls of unmistakable Scottish angst.  Jon, running in the dark had tragically struck a stump that the good people of Athens had placed in the middle of the sidewalk.  Writhing in pain, and cursing every Greek god in existence, Jon finally rose, and said that it was only his ribs.  We continued on more tightly laced together, following the light of my lamp.

Finally we arrived into Chalandri, and then Psychiko, where the famous Three Tree Rock was waiting, our chosen end-point of 42 km.  Approaching the three rocks in the now dead of night with a single lamp, we climbed as one, attempting to avoid certain injury.  We arrived on a central plateau, and paused – rhw plateau felt unmistakably extraterrestrial, as if we stayed long enough we would be beamed aboard some alien ship.  Or maybe we were all hallucinating after running for over 8 hours.

Running along the plateau, we then descended on a road where finally my watch hit 42 km, and we stopped and sang happy birthday, while clutching (holding) onto each other.  We were in the middle of nowhere, brought together by distance, time and symbolism, vintage FSG.

We caught a cab back to the palace, showered, and enjoyed a Greek meat at Il Grecko, foregoing the contemporary and popular ‘Balcony’ for the deserted , air-like-an-ashtray smell of the main dining room.  The owner schooled us on the merits of Greek bread vs pita bread, the former clearly superior, while the latter apparently never fresh, and deserved to be spit on.

The next morning was a far cry from the past as we slept through the sunrise, rising at 9:30 am to assess our physical and mental states.   Validating we could still walk, we headed for a proper viewing of the Acropolis as actual paying customers (no drones allowed).  The Acropolis was an impressive restoration of Greek splendor, a tribute to a time and place, magnified by imposing marble.   It was the very marble from the Pellentic mountain where we had gotten lost the day before, rightfully restored here and now with the same audacity of the FSG warrior arriving to announce another conquered land. 

FSG Athens – January 28, 2019