I’m tuning in to this running idea

It wasn’t going to be a precise measure of how long it would take me to run across central Christchurch, I realised a couple of minutes after I set off. But it would do.

I was heading at slow, sensible speed, up the footpath, south towards the city centre. It was only when Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer faded out and the first bars of Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman sounded that it struck me I could get an idea of how long this uncharted run took from the number of songs I heard. I’d stuck my 700-odd ‘‘liked songs’’ on Spotify on shuffle play.

By the time I reached the CBD, I was discovering just how much Julian Cope’s World, Shut Your Mouth gets the blood pumping, but I hit a roadblock with Brotherhood of Man’s Kisses For Me. It was cute in the 1970s when I was about 9, but now it just sounds like bubblegum flavoured sexism. So I skipped on.

I once wrote how much I hated cover versions, based largely on Madonna’s ill-conceived crack at Don McLean’s American Pie, but the Mutton Birds’ grittier version of Fourmyula’s Nature has helped sway me. It gave me a jolt as I ran along the Avon, back over the Bridge of Remembrance and down to Hereford St, where I knew my goal would be in sight. Coffee at a weekday go-to, 047 Coffee Caravan. Friendly faces, well-priced, good coffee – the trifecta.

Kiss frontman Paul Stanley was into I Was Made For Loving You

when I stopped, but as I walked off with my coffee, there was a brief pang of regret that I couldn’t run to the sound of the dancing Cossacks on Boney M’s Rasputin.

Not the most conventional measurement, but then the run hadn’t been carefully planned. Rather, I’d been inspired by those around me at work who had pounded the roads around Queenstown during last weekend’s half-marathon and marathon. They made me do it, take the first step. They and my daughter, who ran her first half in April. I’m challenged to join her next time out.

The next day I pressed play on the Stones’ Paint It Black asI started, and reached caffeine salvation as the instrumental finish on Joe Jackson’s Be My Number Two played out. Just over 16 minutes. About 2.5km ... maybe.

I had wondered on that first run how many songs it might take to run the Queenstown Marathon. At least 15 times as many as I was hearing on my beginner’s outings, I worked out, so at least 60 songs averaging slightly over four minutes. You’d want to make a playlist specifically, I think, that lent itself to a good running tempo, with the occasional kick. I’d definitely want Stevie Nicks, and Florence Welch, and perhaps those dancing, chanting Cossacks helping me along.

But I quickly graduated to wondering whether the music of those 700-odd songs would be enough to get right through one of the most gruelling races of all, which I have learnt a lot about lately. Not that I’m thinking of running it, but I did suggest it to a colleague this week. He was on the website in about 30 seconds, checking out the qualifying requirements.

I’d better warn him that’s apparently the first step towards obsession, making the Spartathlon his personal passion project. Which would be strangely appropriate, because the man who has helped teach me so much about it has done so through a passion project of his own, documenting the remarkable race for a global audience.

Barney Spender and I crossed paths in South Africa in the mid1990s, and became friends. He’d been an actor who turned to sports journalism in 1988 when he started covering a Somerset cricket team inspired by Martin Crowe. He found his way south five years later, and ended up covering the first Springbok tour to New Zealand since the turbulent 1981 trip, for the SABC. He even made an appearance on the Holmes show after Johan le Roux bit Sean Fitzpatrick’s ear in the second test.

But it was while living in Greece for several years that Barney came across the Spartathlon, a race that began in the 1980s and has its origins in the stories surrounding the legendary runner Pheidippides. You remember him, right? Most stories have him running from Marathon to Athens to deliver the message that the Athenians have prevailed in a battle against the powerful Persians, then dying from exhaustion. But the race taps into an even more extraordinary part of the Pheidippides legend, that he apparently ran from Athens to Sparta, 246km away, in 490BC, to

I’d been inspired by those around me at work who had pounded the roads around Queenstown during last weekend’s half-marathon and marathon. They made me do it, take the first step.

request reinforcements as the Athenians faced being overrun by a vast Persian force anchored in the Bay of Marathon.

Participants now have 36 hours to run those 246km, with the added complication of numerous checkpoints along the course, where they need to be inside cut-off times, or be pulled from the race. The ultimate objective is to get to Sparta and kiss the feet of a statue of the legendary Spartan King Leonidas (think 300).

In the race Barney and his team filmed, there were 349 entrants, with only a third expected to finish – Kiwi Kim Allen was one of those who did – and it’s an extraordinary study of the lengths human beings will go to in order to reach a goal against huge odds.

To find out more about this extraordinary award-winning doco, go to https://www.tribal. film/sparta/. Despite being made on the smell of an oily rag, those involved were determined it would be made to the highest possible standard, which it is. There’s even original poetry and music written specifically for it.

If running’s your thing, or even if you just admire human endurance, take a look. It’s an extraordinary tale, but be warned, it may be the start of an obsession. I’m just off to help my colleague with his playlist.