Hardness, in my opinion, is difficulty per unit time integrated over event time, in which case I think the marathon would be hardest.
As for which event reaches peak difficulty per unit time (for me personally anyway), I would have to go with the 800m (could be 1500m depending on the day). Shorter than that doesn't allow the effect to build up all the way, and longer than that requires less effort per time in order to finish with the fastest time possible.
Maybe I'm rusty on the calc, but isn't difficulty/time integrated over time just the difficulty?
Whatever, I vote 800.
For me, probably 3000m or 5000m indoors
reason - pain and concentration - you watch those laps go down on the lap sign 200m track, battling o2 debt/extreme lactic acid/dry air/what have you, etc
.The Original EDL wrote:
The Real UncleB wrote:600 Meters, if run properly
Is this someone pretending to be UncleB or did UncleB REALLY just post about something other than Jews?
On the topic - this is like a topic for non-runners. I was under the impression that any runner would realize that ANY distance run all out should hurt the same?
What you "realize" and what is true are two distinct things.
400 Hurdles
None of these are "hard"
Marathon, running on an emtpy glycogen tank is tougher than swimming in lactic acid.
Mr. Battery wrote:
Which race is the hardest, has the most pain, is the hardest to succeed in?
The only time in my life when I sincerely thought I might die was in the 30 seconds to 1 minute directly after an 800m race
Yes, it is, but I was giving a good way to visualize it. Charge per second (current) integrated over time gives total charge, but "current" is what's valuable.
400H was not painfull to me for some reason!...i have a low 49 pr...i always finished strong,400m got me good.
I used to think 800 until I ran a marathon. Well, the first 20ish miles of a marathon actually feel great. but if you really try to squeeze every second out of yourself it's rough.
I agree. 800s and marathons are tied for the honor in my book. 800s are excrutiating but over quickly. On the other hand, marathons feel easy until somewhere around 18 to 22, then the quads are gone, the glycogen is gone and you've got a long way death march in front of you.
I'm gonna go with the six day race.
McQeen, Scott wrote:
most pain, i would have to go with the 1,000m indoors.
Almost agree... but I'd say outdoors. Running 5 laps gives some "organization/perspective/tactics" to mind. Doing 2.5 laps outdoors... man, that just f*.cks me up on what's going on and when to go.
after my experience at ncaa regionals yesterday... i would have to say the 10k in cross country is the toughest race i have ever done. miles 4 and 5 felt like death to me
800 simple as that
that last 200 is a freight train of pain
never before have i experienced that level of pain in any other distance, and i've run everything from 400 to marathon
You asked what the hardest distance is. Why are people writing 800s or 400s? Anyone can run that far so hard hard can it be. The OP never said the most painfull distance.
If you are going with hardest distance you have to say the longer the race the tougher. I would have to go with Badwater or Hardrock. Very few people in the world could actually complete either one of these races within the time limits allowed.
migo wrote:
Maybe I'm rusty on the calc, but isn't difficulty/time integrated over time just the difficulty?
It's the average difficulty, yes. The average difficulty is what we're trying to solve for in applesauce7's opinion.
I think the correct measure of difficulty is the L2-norm of difficulty/time.