While we were in Athens Cara and I had an awesome opportunity to use the track at the Panathenaic Stadium. This stadium was originally built to house games in ancient Greece, modified during the Roman times for gladiator battles, and eventually passed into ruins. When they decided to start the modern Olympics, they rebuilt the entire stadium in the late 1800s for the 1896 games. Today it is open for tourists and they have a pretty good audio guide talking about the history of the stadium and the Olympic Games.
We had the place to ourselves. It was incredible.
Not advertised anywhere overtly is the fact that you can show up before they open up for tourists and run on the track (provided you still pay the 5 euro entry fee). Cara and I were the first people in the stadium and did some (roughly) 400 m repeats and a trip up the stairs to cap it all off. We got some great photos in the morning before anyone else joined in and also a great workout.
Quite the view from the top...
It was amazing to get to sweat in the same arena that so many other people have before us, and once again we feel truly blessed to be on this adventure!
For the record, Jeff's fastest lap was 1:26 today, and Cara's was 1:30. The fastest in the 1896 was also an American, but Thomas Burke won the gold medal in 54.2 seconds that year.