Happy birthday to me! I'm currently vacationing in Greek islands, not really for my birthday but it does happen to include my birthday, the 47th one. Vacationing for my birthday is not really my thing. My birthday thing is more like this: After the red-eye flight, get up the next morning at 5:30am and take a taxi to the village of Marathon, Greece, and then run the original marathon course back to Athens, Greece. This wasn't some kind of epic achievement; people run this course all the time (usually in the organized event). But it's also sorta sacred ground for distance runners. Report: Finding the start was not too hard. There's a plaza that I suspect was made for when they had the Olympics in 2004, with modern looking pan-cultural sculpture things that they let vines grow over, and a stone that I let myself believe is from the original 1986 olympics: ΣΤ Φoν Ηoμ Here Sigma Tau 40 is short for "(Atari) ST (10)40." Actually, just kidding, the 40 is for marking the 40 kilometers (even though the rest of the signage counts up) in the route—this original one is actually only 40km instead of the now-traditional and much rounder 42.195km. I got fairly lucky with the weather; it was about 65ºF and overcast. The forecast called for rain all morning, even a "yellow alert"—whose severity I a not really calibrated on—but when I got up it felt perfect and so I did not let myself wimp out. It rained a few times and the ground was wet and my hat kept blowing off, but I was relieved that heat was not a real issue. I also wore brand new sneakers like an idiot (especially since I have been suffering some achilles problem for months). The course itself couldn't be easier to follow. There's a blue line painted on the ground for almost the whole thing: Blue line Also, the course is now a major road, so you get to breathe diesel fumes to power you up for pretty much the whole time. Most of it has decent sidewalks, but several miles are like this: You get better at dodging bushes as it goes So in addition to it not being long enough, I would not try to run this to set a Personal Record. The route also has about 9 miles of relentless uphill in the middle third. I was a bit worried about this too because I haven't really been training for long distances (I think the last time I ran 20+ miles was the Detroit Marathon in 2022?) But I was going slow and drinking plenty of water, and ultimately it wasn't even that hard. It finishes in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, a beautiful all-marble stadium, and so of course I also paid the €12 to get in there, and then of course it has a track in excellent condition so I needed to do a lap before shouting "νενικήκαμεν!" and then dying, but then it seemed so close to a "proper" 26.2 miles that I did five more laps to do so. Here's winner: I'm Winner My time was 5h1m0s, which is of course bad, but given that I was not racing at all Otherwise I have been doing relaxing things and also Tom things (math/programming but with a nice scenic backdrop and a beer) on this trip. Relatedly: The hills are alive with the sound of Noperts! More on this and other topics soon.