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ALC translate the Japanese マラソン into the English "marathon", which the English
Wikipedia says has an `official distance of 42.195 kilometres`.

Is マラソン always 42.195 km?

Or has the Japanese word a broader meaning, describing any kind of running
race?

For instance, [this
page](http://www.solius.jp/marathon/categories/short10.html) is a list of マラソン
under 10 kilometers: `1km～10kmのマラソン大会一覧`

So, what is actually a マラソン?
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definitions katakana loanwords wasei-eigo
Is マラソン always 42.195 km?
「マラソン」 is a Japanese word. It should not matter what the word "marathon" means
in the original language from which Japanese borrowed the word.

Likewise, 「[手紙]{てがみ}」, in Japanese, means a "letter", but 「[手紙]{shou zhi}」, in
Chinese, means "toilet paper". There are no problems with that, however,
because those are two different languages.

Well, so much for preliminaries. The word 「マラソン」 can be used to refer to any
running event if the distance is "long" by someone's **subjective** judgement.
The "official" マラソン is, of course, 42.195 km.

When I was a kid, which was before we had the word 「ジョギング」, many people around
me called "running around the neighborhood for 10-20 minutes for fun and/or
health" マラソン. We did not really have another word for it.

マラソン does not even have to involve running, believe it or not. 「ヒアリングマラソン」 is
a method of learning a foreign language where you keep listening to recordings
for hours at a time. 「[禁煙]{きんえん}マラソン」 is for those trying to quit smoking. You
try to break your own record in how many days you can go without smoking so
that your brand-new reward pack that you give to yourself for making a new
record tastes incredibly great.
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マラソン by its own strictly means running 42.195 km, as long as it is used as the
name of professional athletic competitions. For example, "10000m走" (10,000
metres) is never マラソン. 長距離走【ちょうきょりそう】 is the generic term which corresponds to
"long-distance running" (usually >= 5 km), which of course includes マラソン.

When it comes to amateur events or PE classes at school, マラソン can refer to
many types of long-distance running (or any other "very long" events,
metaphorically).

There are ハーフマラソン (≒21 km) and クォーターマラソン (≒10 km) mainly for amateur runners.
So if you do need a distinctive word, you can also call the 42 km version as
フルマラソン. (And I think English has words like "full marathon" and "half
marathon", too.)
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answer