Kalamazoo Christian Running

"A Trained Runner"

Few sports have a lineage as ancient and noble as running.

In the ancient writings of Herodotus (Book VI, Great Books of the Western World), it tells the story of the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), where the mighty world power of Persia had come to extinguish the young strength of Greece, cradle of Western Civilization.

The Persians had come to the plains of Marathon, thinking it a good place to fight with their cavalry. The threatened city-state of Athens sent a messenger to the other great Greek city-state of Sparta, asking for help.

This messenger was one Pheidippides "by profession and practice a trained runner" who finished the 140 mile distance the next day.

The crucial Battle of Marathon was won by the Greeks, and the Persian empire never recovered. Because of this battle, and the subsequent rise of Rome (as prophesied by Daniel) Jesus was born and Christianity later flourished among Western civilization, of which America is a part.

On December 8, 2010, celebrating the 2,500th anniversary of this run, and recognizing ancient Greece as the forerunner of democracy, the United States House of Representatives honored the battle of Marathon as one of the most significant battles in human history. You can read the bill here.

In 1859 the British writer John Stuart Mill said "The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods."

In 1896, at the first revived Olympics in Athens, Greece, they had a distance race run from Marathon to Athens to commemorate this run, which became the basis for the contemporary "marathons" run around the world ever since.