Marathon to Athens Virtual Challenge Progress December 16, 2021

Well, that did not last long!  On December 10th I stated I would try my best to walk away from these virtual challenges, now I am skating right back into them.  It's the same but different this time!  I will be recording my distances covered for the Marathon to Athens Virtual Challenge but I will only be tracking the kilometres I cover when I skate.  The distance for this journey is only 42.2 kms, yet I picked 84 days as the time frame to reach completion.  For the sport of skating, only a portion (approximately half) of the actual distance covered is used towards the challenge so this will probably take the entire winter to complete if I skate once a week.  

This skating photo from March is the one I choose to use as my marker on the map.

When I registered on December 13th, there were already over 34 thousand other conquerors ahead of me.

This virtual challenge takes you along the legendary route of the original marathon in Greece.  It begins in Marathon and ends in Athens.  Having been a marathoner a number of years back, this challenge peaked my interest when then announced it a few months ago.  At 42.2 kms, the distance was too short for tracking while hiking but it is the perfect distance to track for skating.

the virtual starting location in Marathon

This is my actual starting location on The Ice Trail at Bowness.

I used the Conqueror program to generate my own postcard.

the first postcard to arrive once I began the challenge