Today we set out early in the morning, ready for one of the final stretches towards Athens. As a matter of fact we will reach Athens tomorrow, via the legendary battlefield of Marathon.

From where we finished yesterday, we ran down a big valley for a long time, parallel to the mountains. It was easy and enjoyable running. Mother Nature seemed to encourage the runners: you could smell strawberries and chamomile and other flowers on the sides of the road and some of the mountains had still snow on the top.

As Frank was running through a small village a local shop owner gave him a bottle with a liter of orange juice. After one kilometer it became too heavy for him though, and he gave it to the officers in the police-car following him. They enjoyed the juice in his name!

Along the road, like everywhere in Greece you see many little shrines. They look like miniature churches mounted on a pole of about a meter high. Usually they have a bottle of lamp oil inside and a small lamp.

Today, we were just concentrating on the running; by two o'clock we had already covered over a 100 km and passed Thiva the city were we would sleep tonight. We didn't have any meetings except with car drivers that were honking enthusiastically. We passed Thiva to run already a part of tomorrow's route. It was not so hot and pleasant for running anyway.

Half past four we called it a day. We are only seven runners on the team and by that time everybody ran as much as he could reasonably run. We ran 140 km, Martin and Frank did a half marathon and the two girls on the team Sarah and Tatiana did both around 27 km! Tomorrow their muscles will get some well deserved rest.

Distance: 140km

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