Abstract: Recent years have witnessed people's enthusiasm for marathon in China and this reveals that the extension of elite sports into mass sports. As an epic of modern sport, marathon is a metaphor for the communitarian values such as communal interests, fairness, justice and virtue. Although marathon is an exhibition platform for group value and self-value, and participating in marathon is a way to identify and pursue community value, the booming of marathon implies a tendency to pursue interests irrationally. The game should retain its nature as a sports game, functioning as an arena for the interaction of body and mind for both groups and individuals.

Key words: communitarianism, marathon, cultural value, irrational, valne identity, cultural symbol