Can we talk about how crazy hard this Olympic marathon course is?

That is nothing compared to real taxes like Hard Rock.

Surprised this got so many downvotes. Maybe the "pansies" at the end? 1,400 ft over a marathon distance is not flat, but it's also not "crazy hard". Ultimately, the competitors are racing each other and trying to get everything out of themselves, so it will be about as hard as any other marathon. They also aren't going to be doing 4:40 on the uphills, they are gauging their effort and comparing themselves to others on the same course.

Some terrain-specific training will definitely help the competitors. But I'm used to living where people train on trails mostly (with flat routes also available) and see that as normal, so a competitor training like that might not need to make many adjustments. Like "semi amateurs", I also total over 1000 feet per 10 miles on my usual runs on trails, and I consider that moderately hilly. But that's well short of doing proper mountain runs, where it can easily be 3000+ feet per 10 miles (or 3000 feet in 3 miles).

Top 10 Olympic Marathon Courses By Elevation Gain:

Atlanta 1996 - 1,394 feet
Barcelona 1992 - 367 feet
London 2012 - 354 feet
Sydney 2000 - 279 feet
Tokyo 2020 - 220 feet
Athens 2004 - 131 feet
Rio de Janeiro 2016 - 105 feet
Los Angeles 1984 - 88 feet
Seoul 1988 - 82 feet
Beijing 2008 - 50 feet

Not sure where you are getting your information, but Athens Marathon is a lot harder than listed. As Athens is on a Plateau above the surrounding area.

"
1258 feet (383 meters)
The Athens Marathon course is characterized by a series of rolling hills and significant elevation gains, particularly in the middle section of the race. Here’s a breakdown of the elevation changes: Maximum Elevation: 816 feet (248 meters) Minimum Elevation: 22 feet (6 meters) Total Elevation Gain: 1258 feet (383 meters)"

athensmarathon.com

Marathon

Athens Marathon 10k and 5K - date, time, route

Link:athensmarathon.com/marathon/

Yes. It'll be a race not a time trial.

I love it and it opens the door to an American medal.

As someone who measures courses for certification purposes, I always take the reported "elevation gain" stats with many grains of salt. For anything other than a race on a track, or a pure hill climb with zero downhill spots, it's super difficult to ascertain exact elevation gain and loss. Different devices or online mapping tools will produce different elevation stats. I would expect those who measure the Olympics course use the best tools so I'm sure their reported elevation gain numbers are more accurate than your average race. I'm just saying it's a very tough stat to report 100% accurately.

Real world example... The marathon I work for, we redesigned the course in 2021. When I measured it, I carried a Garmin eTrex30 and was using a Polar M430 watch. Plus just for the general public to see, we have the course up on MapMyRun. The course is a 13.1 mile loop that we run twice to get the full marathon distance. MMR says 1240' of elevation gain. But the MMR elevation profile shows a big uphill, +120', at the 11.5 mile mark of the loop that is not there. The course is on a bikepath cut on an old railroad bed that's cut out of a large hill. MMR sees that hill on a topo map and doesn't know the course stays at the same elevation. In fact, the entire section of miles 10.9-12.3 of the course is almost dead flat, drops just a few feet. But MMR shows it as starting at 170', dropping to 99' (which would be below the lake level, rising to 197', then dropping to 99' again. In reality, basing all these figures on knowing the lake level is right around 100' above sea level, that section starts at ~130' at mile 10.9, drops steadily to ~120' at mile 12.3, has a quick drop to 110' at 12.4, then stays flat to 13.1. So MMR overstates the elevation gain of just that section by ~150'. MMR shows 2 other sections as having uphills that aren't present, adding another 150'+/- to the total elevation gain per lap. When I subtract the hills that MMR thinks are there that aren't, I get ~600' total elevation gain, which makes more sense to me.

Comparing my Garmin and Polar to MMR... A lot depends on what resolution setting I use. Generally, I have found the Garmin is more accurate when I'm hiking, by a lot. The Polar does fine around town and is more convenient. I don't know how to change the resolution on the Garmin (or if you even can), I just turn it on and stick it in a pocket. The Polar, I know how to change from highest resolution mode to the battery saver modes that record less frequently. When I measured our course the Garmin got right around 700' total elevation gain. The Polar, in highest resolution mode, got just over 1000', and in the medium resolution setting got just under 600' total elevation gain. That tells me that the little ups and downs make a big difference on a device.

That marathon you work for...has it ever occurred to the organizers to hire a surveyor for this? This is literally what they do for a living, and they will be far more accurate than anything a Garmin watch or a free app will tell you.

If you have ever ran against Africans you know the hills won’t really affect them much if they don’t drop out. Yes some of the top people will drop out but this course won’t be so slow that Mantz who on a good day is a mile behind the best will medal. Winning time will be under 205 if it isn’t tactical.

Yuki isn't in shape to run anywhere close to 2:30 and hasn't been in a long time.

Winning time will be 2:10 plus. Any Kenyan not in contention for a medal at 20k will dive and go for the pay later in a big city pacefest.

No way the winning time is slower than 2:07:xx

Do you think the OC has decided to hide the course map from any African marathoners? They know it’s not a 2:02 course, so it’s not as if a big group will go out in 61 and drop at 30k.

Why do people act like Africans don’t run on hills in their training and that SLC, Boulder, and Flag are more mountainous than anywhere else really? It’s not like Mantz and crew are out tagging peaks. If it’s just based off of training simuli (aka, threshold running uphill and time spent pounding the quads on downhills), the Africans do that more than any other group just based on the topography of their communities. They only lack time on pavement. It’s not miles and miles of flat bike paths and then a 30min drive to the hills in these Ethiopian and Kenyan towns. The morning jog around neighborhood streets is a few hundred feet of elevation gain.

Trail runners Kilian Jornet or Nienke Brinkman (Nike trail) could have done some damage.

I respectfully disagree. Last Olympic marathon men. 106 start, 78 finish. 2 Ethiopians 1 Kenyan 1 Ugandan dnf - all with impressively fast pb's. Winner mid 2:08, PB low 2:01. Second high 2:09. Third place 2:10. Kenyan Cherono in 4th 2:03 PB ran over 2:10. Paris is hotter and hillier.

This is nonsense. First, it's not a top-ten list of anything. It simply provides some numbers (in feet) allegedly associated with the last ten Olympic marathons. The idea that the 2021 Sapporo Olympic marathon course, for example, had more elevation gain than the 1896 Athens Olympic marathon course (which had a very long, steep hill) or that the 1960 "seven hills" Rome Olympic marathon course had total elevation gains of less than fifty feet is silly.

Second, the numbers listed aren't even associated with the same parameters. The number of feet given for the 1992 point-to-point Barcelona course appears to be the approximate net elevation gain for the whole course, which was fairly flat until the last several kilometers, when the course climbed close to 500 feet as it approached the finish at the stadium at the top of Montjuic; in contrast, the number given for the loop course in Atlanta appears to be a summation of all of the positive delta changes in elevation throughout the course without accounting for any of the negative delta changes in elevation along the way; the total net elevation change in the Atlanta course was zero. And the 2004 Athens Olympic marathon had a net elevation gain of about 660 feet from 18K to 30K with a significant net elevation gain for the whole course (probably exceeding 100 feet) despite a substantial net elevation loss over the last seven or eight kilometers, whereas the 1984 LA and 2016 Rio Olympic marathon courses were almost pancake flat, with no significant net elevation change.

This whole idea of measuring the summation of positive delta elevation changes while excluding all negative delta elevation changes has come into vogue in recent decades, when such data have become easily measurable using low-cost trackers. For a variety of physiological reasons (including variations in running efficiency at different grades and variations in loading forces on connective and muscle tissue at different grades), it is not entirely irrelevant to estimating finishing times in marathons, but it has nowhere near the significance that it has in cycling, where variations in air resistance (highly correlated with changes in uphill and downhill grades, especially when riding without pacers) have a huge effect on energy expenditure over a given distance at racing speed. And it is laughable to suggest that marathoning on the courses we're discussing here bear any resemblance to mountain racing.

Jornet could be given a ten-minute head start and still wouldn't medal.

😂 The downvote count says it all.

I dunno.....With most Marathons we are all happy to see good temps and a "good" course in order to determine the best.

But adding hills and heat is surplus to requirements imho. Now we are throwing eggs at a wall.

Sometimes in these circumstances the winner is also someone who has already proven themselves to be the best. But often, it's someone who gets lucky - the egg sticks.

The Marathon is already extreme, without hills and heat.