On the ‪12th November‬ I hope to complete the Athens Authentic Marathon, which begins in the town of Marathon and finishes in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens. The story goes that an ancient Greek warrior and messenger named Pheidippides, ran this route to deliver the news of a military victory against the Persians in the Battle of Marathon, 490BC...the story is the inspiration for the modern day marathon. After delivering the news, Pheidippides collapsed and died - this may seem like an extreme ending for an Athenian warrior, but to pay him his credit, he had just fought in an epic battle and sources suggest that he had been running and fighting all over Greece in the months prior to his final 26 miles. With that said, the course does in fact look real tough  (‪the 11th to the 30th‬ km is uphill) and so I'm hoping that my training pays off...

 

What would really spur me on is knowing that I'm running for a good cause, so I'm raising money for Yazda, an amazing charity which was established in the aftermath of the 2014 Yazidi Genocide. The Yazidis are a majority-Kurdish-speaking religious group living mostly in northern Iraq. They number less than one million worldwide.  Reports have estimated that around 10,000 Yazidis were killed or captured and enslaved, during the ISIS seize of Mount Sinjar in August 2014. Yazda's main aim is to support the survivors of the genocide and to ensure the future safety of the Yazidis and other ethno-religious minority groups in Iraq and Syria. 




You can find out more about Yazda here: https://www.yazda.org/.

Any donations will be very much appreciated!

Kate xxxx