What if we tried, just once, to "run like the ancient Greeks"? Whether we love running or not, one thing is certain. Everything has changed since 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 Marathon from the Acropolis of Athens. Exactly what I intend to run.

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