Marathon

For the French animation studio, please refer to Marathon (studio).

A marathon can refer either to a sporting event or a programming block.

1. Sporting event. A foot race in which athletes must run, walk or jog 26.22 miles. It has been a track and field event in the Summer Olympics since the first modern Olympics, held in 1896 in Athens, Greece.
2. Programming block. A special event type of programming in which one program, series or movie runs constantly over several hours or days without interruption by any other program. There is no official minimum running length for what may constitute a "marathon," but many marathons may run 12 hours or more. Very often, a marathon will be a 12- or 24-hour programming block consisting solely of episodes of one TV series—many networks air marathons on holidays (such as the Sci Fi Channel, which airs a 44-hour The Twilight Zone marathon on New Year's Day). A network may also refer to a programming block as a marathon if it is a complete run of a TV series, even if the number of episodes of that series do not total 12 hours or more.