The marathon is the epic journey

that elevates the mundane Once-lonely marathoners are now joined by bands, celebrities, cheerleaders and thousands of competitors. It's the 19-mile mark of the 1984 Penn Relays Marathon.

The longest seven miles of your life are still ahead of you. All you want to do is quit or cry or catch a bus to the finish. Your legs burn with lactic acid. You can't see anyone in front of you or behind you. You wonder why you choose to torture yourself like this.

Then, it's like a mirage. Too perfect to be real. The kid looks like he is straight out of a Disney film. And his timing is so cliched, it might as well be a sappy made-for-TV movie.

The kid lifts a boom box over his head and in a move more inspirational than a Southern Baptist church, the kid blasts Bruce Springsteen's “Born to Run.”

And suddenly, your legs are lighter, your spirit restored, and you realize that, baby, you really were born to run. And that's why you're running the marathon.

Little did you know that if you'd just waited 20 years to run that first marathon, you might have had the Boss playing live at mile 19 instead of relying on a kid with a cassette tape to inspire you.

Marathon running has changed a lot since the days when a couple of dozen crazies would gather on a weekend and pay a $5 entry fee to test their endurance and take home a T-shirt.

American marathons aren't won by guys named Frank and Bill anymore. Today's races are dominated by African runners whose names contain 25 consonants and just one vowel. On Sunday, the modern-day megamarathon comes to the East Valley when 28,000 runners pay as much as $95 to participate in the P.F. Chang’s Rock ’n’ Roll Arizona Marathon & Half-Marathon, which will be just as much a circus as a sporting event.

To show how much the sport has changed since the days when cross-country teams were packed with band geeks who needed an athletic activity to get into the college of their choice, runners are so cool now that they even have cheerleaders. That's right, 40 high school cheerleading squads will line the course with more than 50 live bands to cheer on the runners.

And while P. Diddy won't be running an East Valley city, the stars will be striding. David James Elliott, star of CBS’ “JAG”; “7th Heaven” cast members George Stults and Tyler Hoechlin; country music star Jo Dee Messina; Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Luis Gonzalez; and Goo Goo Dolls drummer Mike Malinin will all be participating in the Rock ’n’ Roll Arizona Marathon & Half-Marathon.

“Not everybody is born to be a star,” said Brian Collins, a coach with East Valley-based 1st Marathon. “But that's precisely the reason the marathon continues to grow in popularity. It's something accessible for just about anybody to try. But it's a very exclusive group because it takes time to plan and accomplish the goal. Not everyone can stick with it through training.”

In an age where everyone wants to be a star, Sunday's race will produce 28,000 of them. They will each have a different reason for running. They will each have different aches, different motivations, different obstacles to overcome. And they won't all be Lara Flynn Boyle-sized.

They will be Oprah-sized, too. Such is the changing face — and body shape — of the marathon.

But they will be united in the purity of the run. No matter how glitzy the finish line looks, no matter how many vendors are trying to squeeze the last dollar out of the runners, no matter how long it takes the runners in the back of the pack to wiggle through the shuffling crowd to cross the starting line, it all comes down to putting one foot in front of the other and facing a challenge that the human body wasn't built to accomplish.

It's 26 miles, 385 yards. The unique distance, the myth of Pheidippides (the Athenian courier who ran to Sparta to seek aid against the Persians before the battle of Marathon in the fifth century B.C.) and stories of the “Wall,” that invisible mark at 20 miles when the body runs out of stored energy. The very word marathon is synonymous with the ultimate endeavor.

“The marathon enables people to experience an epic, life-defining moment,” said 41-year-old Michael Patterson of Scottsdale, who completed his first marathon in June. “I've traveled, been there for the birth of my children and lived a very full life. But the feeling of accomplishment I got when I finished the marathon is indescribable. You have to experience it to know what I'm talking about. It changed me as a person.”

That is the epic challenge the marathon brings. That is the itch people need to scratch when their life becomes mundane and they fall short of the dreams of their youth. It's that burning desire to break out of that rut, to look for something that will define their lives and inspire them to do more than just muddle through day after day.

That is the marathon. The business surrounding it is just the smoke screen.

On Sunday, 28,000 average people will step away from their average lives and average jobs and will do something extraordinary. They will rise to the challenge and complete a marathon.

Forget “The Lord of the Rings.” This will be a real epic.