The Ten Worst States for Distance Running

The entire middle third of the continential U.S. sucks balls. Kudos to you for having the honesty to admit it. Weather extremes, insects out the ass, generally bland terrain, boring towns, etc, etc. I can't imagine much duller than living in Iowa or Kansas. Life is short. Live someplace nice.

agreed. I don't think anything along the coast deserves to be on the list beside the deep south. but they don't the internet down there yet so they won't be on here defending themselves

joe9090 wrote:

NJ is the smallest state to produce the most sub 4 minute milers, which I think is 11. New Hampshire only has 1 4 minute miler. It seemed in the NCAA basketball finals a quarter of the player were from NJ.

As for NH and 1 4-minute miler, maybe you're right.

But in addition to O'Brien, you've forgotten about Andy Wheating, Russell Brown, and Macklin Chaffee, all of whom have BROKEN 4-minutes in the last couple of years. They grew up near each other in the Hanover area, I think, which is a pretty salty concentration of talent.

Were you referring, instead, to the number of sub-4's run on NH soil? In that case, you might be right.

I think your right, he is a smart poster if you ask me there are seven pages of comments!!!

Free Advice wrote:

You're an idiot.

You refer to yourself as "The Smartest Let's Run Poster".

That doesn't really mean too much. It's like saying you're the tallest midget.

Or the thinnest girl in Lane Bryant.

wilco wrote:

Let's see:

Minnesota: Goucher, Tollefson, Bjorklund, Beardsley, Kempainen, Holman, Plascencia, Nenow, The Heaths, Will Leer...that's 5 seconds of keyboarding...

Ron Daws

Original ranking was way off. This is based on culture/community acceptance of running, available sidewalks/trails/tracks, history/tradition:

1) Mississippi

2) South Dakota

3) Nevada

4) Hawaii

5) West Virginia

6) Alaska

7) Kansas

8) Alabama

9) Louisiana

10) South Carolina

Winnner wrote:

Im going to go with arkansas that place blows its averages over 100+ degrees in the summer and the humidity has been terrible so far, and back in the winter it was in the single digits-teens and was covered in 14 inches of ice and snow mostly ice. This place really blows. You get a 40 day window in the spring and fall where it is nice but after that its a living hell on both ends of the spectrum.

...and its hard to run carrying a banjo.

If the OP were really the smartest LR poster, then he wouldn't have been ambiguous with the entire goal of the thread.

The way it's formatted made it look, initially, like he was listing the states w/ the poorly CALIBER of athletes, not something stupid about the weather.

And that's how everyone took it for about 2 pages.

Nice.

I live in Iowa and I more than agree that it sucks for running...unless you like freezing and slipping in the winter and frying in the summer. There are maybe 3 months of good running conditions throughout the whole year.

Hmmm... Nevada 3rd in that criteria? For a state with less than 3 million people, it has tons of trails/tracks to run on, and running is fairly well accepted. There's plenty of high altitude, and Vegas is pretty low at around 1000 ft. Weather outside of Vegas in the summer is great too. Granted, history/tradition sucks.

sub 4:00 wrote:

Original ranking was way off. This is based on culture/community acceptance of running, available sidewalks/trails/tracks, history/tradition:

1) Mississippi

2) South Dakota

3) Nevada

4) Hawaii

5) West Virginia

6) Alaska

7) Kansas

8) Alabama

9) Louisiana

10) South Carolina

News from Hawaii Front:

Duncan McDonald. Broke Pre's 5000m AR. Stole that "gift" right from under the tree. Those smelly Hawaiians...

Criteria for worst/best running state:

1) Amount of annual snowfall

2) Average range of temperature change in a year

3) Humidity/Dew point in the year

4) Effort of state to keep Trails/sidewalks/roads runable

5) Frequency of homosexual slurs directed a runners by passing motorists/pedestrians

7) Average time of road race finishers from state

8) Number of elite training groups in state

9) Number of deaths caused by runner-vehicle collisions

10) Percentage of state citizens who are “students of the sport”

Wheating is from Vermont

I'm surprised no one has mentioned wyoming, I don't know any decent runners that have come from that state. Sure its probably nice to run there but if you even look at the highschool results any medicore runner from any other state could probably win the state championship there.

what about wrote:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned wyoming, I don't know any decent runners that have come from that state. Sure its probably nice to run there but if you even look at the highschool results any medicore runner from any other state could probably win the state championship there.

Wyoming is the least populated state, so that certainly has a lot to do with how competitive it is.

The only thing that should ever be factored are runners from highschool that move on to the college level and beyond.

Otherwise it shouldn't matter the amount of snow on the ground as long as an indoor track is in the state.

You have no idea what your talking about. Minnesota is full of running opportunities. The Twin cities alone have more than 250 miles of running trails. Trails. Not pavement or concrete. On top of that most of those trails are on lakes, creeks or rivers and they are plowed during the winter.

If you can't put on some running tights, a thermo shirt and gloves then you don't deserve to call yourself a runner because thats all you need; I lived and ran there for 10 years.

As for hill training the whole area has hills to train on and you can do weights, northern Minnesota is filled with quality hills and mountains(defining mountain by 1500ft vertical elevation gain).

sebcoe7 wrote:

Those miserable Alaska winters sure were a disadvantage when Christine Clark won the Olympic Trials marathon in 2000.

Then she came in 19th place in the Games. That's not as good as Deena's finish, whom I'm pretty sure did most of her training outside in California.