Marathon is a Canadian company best known for producing watches for military specifications, aka MIL-SPEC watches. This watch is a reinterpretation of the historic Marathon GG-W-113 field watch that was in use by the U.S. Army in the 1980s.

Diameter: 36mm (39mm with crown)

Lug-to-lug: 42.5mm

Thickness: 10.8mm

Lug width is: 16mm

The watch has 50 meters of water resistance, though it is stamped as having 30 meters on the back to be consistent with the original MIL-SPEC listing.

Looking at the face of this watch the first thing one notices is the 24-hour dial, with the standard 12 hours is larger Arabic font and the 13 through 24 hours in a smaller font size forming the inner markings. Everything is a stark white against the black dial. The hour and minute hands are syringe style and the watch does have a central sweeping seconds hand. There is quite a bit of text on the dial given its size. Marathon branding appears beneath the 12 o’clock position and beneath that is a U.S. Government notation. Near the 3 o’clock is a radiation symbol due to the tritium lume, and the 9’oclock position has an H3 notation which is the chemical symbol for tritium. Above the 6 o’clock is the designation that it is a 17 jewel movement and Swiss Made flanks the 6 o’clock marker (for while Marathon is Canadian they have the watches assembled in Switzerland). As the tritium markings indicate, lume is actually achieved here via tubes filled with tritium. Since this is radioactive it decays and gives off light without needing charged, but eventually the material decays too much and the lume loses its glowing properties (requiring new tubes installed with fresh tritium should you want the glow back). Tritium markers are at each hour position and on all three hands. The 12 o’clock marker glows orange the rest glow green.

The case is stainless steel and entirely brushed. The side profile is a unique look, one I’ve seen people state reminds them of a mustache. The crown offers two positions. In position zero the watch can be wound and thus this is not a screw-down crown. In position one the time can be set. The second hand does stop so the watch features hacking. The dial is protected by a sapphire crystal.

The watch has a closed caseback and is stamped with information as one often associates with MIL-SPEC watches. This model came on a nylon strap with a single, non-floating keeper of considerable size. As noted in the measurements the 16mm lug width will really limit your strap substitution options. The case does have drilled lugs though for easy spring bar removal.

This watch features the ETA 2801 movement. This is a hand-wind only movement. As the dial indicates it has 17 jewels. This movement has a 36-hour power reserve and beats at 4 Hz.

According to my timegrapher this watch had an average gain of 5.3 seconds per day across six positions, with a range of -6 seconds per day to +13 seconds per day.

My overall thoughts:

Positives:

• Offers a genuine field watch experience with an easy to read dial and a watch small and designed not to get hung up on stuff

• Tritium lume offers nighttime legibility without worrying about charging up the watch

• Hand-wind movement helps keep the size down and allows some nice interaction with the timepiece

Negatives:

• Wish the default nylon strap had a floating keeper

• 16mm lug width is not great for strap changes

• Better water resistance would have been nice

Many of my positives may be negatives for others. This is a smaller watch and that’s probably the main thing to know going in. Remember its purpose. From a military perspective you want something easy to read but also not getting in the way of other activities. Still, by modern standards this is going to feel small so it’s good to understand what you’re getting into with this sort of field watch. Likewise, some people may be annoyed with the tritium decision given it will decay over time and require dealing with a tube change (or just letting it no longer glow). I’d heard mixed things on the brightness of tritium. Overall, I think this glows quite well. No where near as good as freshly charged luminova, but a couple hours into the night and I find this still very easy to read. It’s consistent. As for the hand-wind, I deliberately sought that out but I have forgotten to wind the watch a couple of times (never enough for it to run out of power but when you are used to automatics it is easy to forget). Some folks may want something less fussy and there are field watches out there that will meet that need.

None of the negatives are huge to me. The water resistance is probably the biggest annoyance. The MIL-SPEC standard of 30 meters is pretty limited and Marathon notes that it is actually 50 meters despite the stamped standard, which is decent, but like many I’m always most comfortable if 100 meters is reached.

I think people who really like to change their straps around are going to be at least somewhat frustrated with the 16mm lug width. It wears fine in my view, and looks okay, but obviously that isn’t the most flexible lug width for finding alternative options. In terms of this default nylon strap I do find it comfortable and I like the enlarged keeper but I wish it would float. With my wrist size I have just enough of a tail on the strap to warrant folding it back but I can’t tuck much in. It would have been better in my view to just move the keeper and not fold it at all.