Running the Marathon at Middle Age
Sep 11th, 2009 by admin
The marathon race takes its name from Marathon, a city 42.195 kilometers or 26 and 7/32 miles from Athens. Historical accounts tell us that, over two thousand years ago, a furious battle was fought there against the invading Persia army. When the battle was over, Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, is said to have run the whole distance between the two cities without stopping. When he arrived in Athens, he burst into the Assembly, announced “We have won” and dropped dead.
Because of this event, the 26 and 7/32 miles run by Pheidippides were considered the limit of human endurance. And this is still the length of marathon races today.
Running the marathon is not only a physical activity based on the account of an historical event, but in our society it seems to have acquired a particular symbolic meaning for people reaching middle age.
Running a marathon is a metaphor for pushing oneself to the limit and being successful at it. For people on the cusp of middle age, I suggest, this has specific implications for their physical and emotional identity at this transitional time in their lives.
In this and the following three blogs, I explore the concept of running a marathon as a rite of passage into a new middle age.
It is obvious that men and women in their late thirties and forties are flocking in large numbers to run marathon races across the country.
Statistics from the 2005 and 2007 marathons in the U.S. show that the largest groups of attendants and the fastest runners are men between the ages of 40 and 44. For women, the largest and fastest running group is between ages 35 and 40.
Why are so many people in the 35-45 age bracket so invested in running this race?
The process of aging is not only physiological, but social as well, as people belong to different social groups as they go from childhood to old age.
Traditionally, reaching middle age was quite challenging for most people. Even today, with better health, more knowledge and longer life expectancies, this life transition is still fraught with anxieties and resistances. We live in a youth oriented culture where losing one’s youthful looks is perceived as a narcissistic injury to one’s physical and emotional identity. Most people still believe that there are not many gains to be had at middle age that would compensate for the multiple losses of this developmental passage. The emphasis of middle age in our society is still on what is no longer, as attested by the many jokes about turning 40 and being “over the hill.”
I suggest that running a marathon at this stage in one’s life is a metaphor for a new view of the middle age years, a view that challenges the traditional myths of middle age – life is over at forty – and attempts to provide a new direction for desires and wishes to maintain a healthy life of emotional and physical fitness. At a time when traditional views of middle age, with their bleak and lackluster view of the future are still prevalent, it is easy to understand why the appeal of running a marathon.
