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Monday, October 30, 2006
Flatlanders...
I was reading November's Runner's World the other day and I saw a funny (sad) thing. In one of the Q&A columns, people were asking questions about marathons. Someone asked about the hardest hills in the Marine Corps Marathon here in DC. The columnist's answer was that the hardest hill was the climb to the finish by the Iwo Jima Memorial. You climb about 35 vertical feet over the course of about a third of a mile. That's the hardest climb in the entire race? Oy.
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6 comments:
Joe, growing up in the 'mountains' of PA we called everyone from the cities flatlanders.
That was only 2000 feet up. It wasn't until I went hunting in Montana that I realized what being a flatlander truly meant.
I'll stick to nice level tracks at the high school. I'm not making art out there.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I am totally a flatlander. I didn't start running until I lived in Champaign, and then I moved to DC. I just think calling a 65 foot climb "difficult" is a little much.
This actually turns out to be mildly funnier than I originally thought. I've updated the post to reflect the fact that I miscalculated the final climb. It's actually about 35 vertical feet, not 65.
I originally calculated where on the hill I run up to during my runs on this route, not the path the marathon takes. Oops.
35 vertical feet? Hehe, considering we made poor Al run up 1700 vertical feet, that *is* rather sad...
Now now peeps - let's not be insulting! I ran the San Diego RnR marathon in 1999 and there were some people from Florida who were groaning on 'the big hill'. I kept thinking, "this is a hill?"
It's all relative, you know.
the first two miles of the mcm are a 200 ft incline. and that last .2 miles FEELS like 200 ft...
hee.
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