The marathon distance (42.195 km / 26 miles 385 yards)
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The marathon is the only major athletics event whose distance is an arbitrary historical inheritance rather than a round number. It is 26 miles 385 yards, which converts to 42,194.988 metres and is conventionally written 42.195 km — the metric figure is a rounding of the imperial one, not the other way round. The distance was first run at the 1908 London Olympic Games and was not a standard at the time: Athens 1896 was about 40 km, Stockholm 1912 about 40.2 km and Antwerp 1920 about 42.75 km. The International Amateur Athletic Federation fixed the London figure as the universal marathon distance in 1921, and every marathon record since has been measured against it. Because the number is inherited rather than derived, nothing about human physiology, the length of a stadium lap or the Marathon-to-Athens road explains it.
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- Calibrated bicycle course measurementdepends_on
- The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yardsderived_from
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