[Saxon]

Another point on the horses vs humans, coming from the Wikipedia article, how about climbs of mountains. Most folks switch to mules or go all the way over to human porters. Part of it is we are monkeys, but part of it is that we do better in varied terrain.

Most folks think marathons are the longest people should run. However, in South Africa, the standard is set by something called Comrades. They run between two cities, reversing the direction each year and the distance is 89 km/56 miles Further, they have lots of road races of unusual distances, often longer than marathons. My point is that the numbers of people getting involved is substantial and while most modern humans are in the middle of the food chain, historic humans, even average ones, exercising much more than we do today, could do amazing things. While diet is generally better today, I suspect that the top soldiers of any age ate well most of the time, so they would not have suffered malnutrition as much as the average person.

This is just to say the historic Marathon runner is plausible. Further, in contrast to what another poster suggested, it is quite possible he ran it nude! The Greeks liked to strip down and run “gymnos,” with the idea that carry as little weight as possible to go faster. Think of all the icons you see, the early Olympics. They are nude. This historic figure would not have needed weapons, after all, they had just won the battle.