In the late 1960s and early 1970s, endurance running was gaining popularity at an exponential rate. Paul Milvy organised the scientific and medical conference entitled 'The Marathon: Physiological, Medical, Epidemiological, and Psychological Studies' associated with 1976 New York Marathon and sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences to provide a forum for scientists to interact and to publish the proceedings to serve as a resource for future sports medicine research. The conference was a major success and the published proceedings have continued to be a significant resource for those in exercise science and sports medicine over the past 30 years. The challenge for this meeting is to bring forward the many new findings on marathon running and fill many of the gaps in our knowledge of exercise performance and human health that have occurred since 1976.