By Nicholas Creely
As far as marathons go, the Spartathlon in Greece is one of the most gruelling, exhausting and historic foot races on the planet, an event that takes place in September of every year.
For an individual to even qualify for the race, they have to at-least have run a competitive race of 100km in less than 10 hours and 30 minutes.
But North Dandenong runner George Alexandropoulos is determined to one day compete in this phenomenon, and has been making waves across the world for his almost unheard running feats.
The 30-year-old is on an app called Strava, a global running app that measures distances and he currently leads the world from more than 150,000 participants.
Since 1 January, Alexandropoulos has run a total of 1789km in a total of 87 runs and more than 250,000 minutes of running.
He said that competing in the gruelling marathon was what drives him and that a realisation that he needed to change his lifestyle forever made him start to think differently.
“I, basically, want to do the Spartathlon in Greece, which is a 246-kilometre race – an ultramarathon, that’s my dream,” he said.
“First of all I wanted to lose weight. I guess from there I had a passion for running and I’ve always had a fear of putting the weight back on and I just stuck with it.
“The start of this year I’ve ran every day and I’ve dropped eight kilos since the start of the year.
“I run in the mornings before work and then after work I’ll run, and then on weekends I run as much as I can.
“My goal is 15,000km for the year, which I’m actually already ahead of which is good.
“There’s 12 months in the year and last month I did 1500.
A Spartathlon may await this inspiring runner who one day may achieve his dream and join a list of incredible winners from all across the world.
