Day 191 – EU – Greece [Marathon to Oinofyta]

31/08/20

44km

  From Marathon (Greece) to Oinofyta (Greece)

Europe

Running away from Marathon, up the mountains – back to the solitude of the journey 

I stayed with the Moraitis family yesterday, after a very nice taverna outing. The hospitality I have received in the past few days has been amazing. I was treated to a nice familial taverna dinner last night and a stay in their beautiful house overlooking the whole bay of Marathon. What a treat! Dimitris drove me down to the beach before dawn so that I could restart the run where I finished on Saturday. A very grainy picture in the dark is all I managed to get before I left in the night.

As I left I thought: if I hadn’t driven to this place 17 years ago and met Dimitris, I would probably not be on this journey to run around the world… I thought about it throughout the run.

I went through the town of Marathon and up the mountains, looking back every now and then to enjoy the last views on the sea. It will be over a week before I get to be by the sea again. September is (in my opinion!) the best month to enjoy sea swims in Greece. The sea is warm, the wind is less and the air isn’t as intensely hot as in the summer months. I sure hope I will get to enjoy some of them on my way to Thessaloniki.

There was a fair amount of uphill to go through today, close to 750m. The road I followed was a quiet road that eventually ended up running parallel to the National Road. The last few kilometers were very hot: today and tomorrow are some of the hottest days of the summer (it went to 39 Celsius in the shade today) and I did not get any shade after I exited the mountain road.

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: