Marathon

Neil Peart told Canadian Composer, April 1986, that "Marathon" is about "the triumph of time and a kind of message to myself (because I think life is too short for all the things that I want to do)." He added: "There's a self-admonition saying that life is long enough. You can do a lot - just don't burn yourself out too fast trying to do everything at once. 'Marathon' is a song about individual goals and trying to achieve them. And it's also about the old Chinese proverb: 'The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

In the April 1986 issue of Guitar Player magazine, Alex Lifeson was asked if any tracks on the album were specially difficult to cut. He replied: "It's funny. There's always one song that you're terrified of doing. You think it's going to be really tough, and Marathon was the one. We wrote it and thought, 'This song is going to be like pulling teeth once we get in the studio.' Of course, we get into the studio and it's a breeze. And a song like Emotion Detector, which we thought would be a breeze, was the killer. It was very, very difficult to get the mood right. I'm still not really sold on that song. It never ended up sounding the way I had hoped it would. But the Marathon solo was probably the easiest of all the solos to do."