Harvard physics professor Jenny Hoffman wins US Track & Field National Championship 24 Hour Run and makes world team

I have to say that runners complaining about those who excel at ultra distances being untalented is like a ball boy complaining that the water boy is a joke. See, cause you would both be jokes to the real athletes, except they don't even really care. It's only when you get down to the bottom levels of 'athleticism' that the gutter sniping begins.

Consider this.... wrote:

gfdgfdkgdf wrote:https://www.physics.harvard.edu/node/695

Awesome! Some people have great time management.

Meh..That's not even 10 minute pace. She can probably dish off a lot of her professorial work to graduate students.

ROFL you soooo jelly bro

I wonder if there is anyone in the world who would not be criticized here. Hoffman has not only this national championship, but three kids, has over 4,000 citations, was a national merit scholar, graduated magna c laude from Harvard, with highest honors in physics, won a career NSF grant, is a Harvard physics professor, has many publications, and so forth. By any standards that is incredibly impressive. My college roommate was a brilliant Rhodes Scholar, graduated from our very prestigious la school summa c laude (junior year he had what at that time was the hard to believe 4.17 gpa (4.33 was given for A+), and got his degree in mathematical physics at Berkeley, but only made it to a liberal arts college and lacks the major publications and citations that she has.

By the way, I was forced to edit this post to take out the letters 'um' after the 'c' in the academic praise language above, because my post was considered obscene by the filter software here.

dork

I crewed for a friend last year at the 2015 Northcoast 24 hr run.

Jenny won the 2015 women's race and was 5th overall with, I believe, about 137 miles. During the race I became friends with the person that was crewing for her- David, who is a great guy, and who is also a physics professor at Harvard. I remember that the 2nd place woman was gaining on Jenny with about 5 hours to go, and David and I were computing to see if Jenny could hold her lead by the end of 24 hours. She did by digging deep and winning by about 5 miles.

I took a short piece of video of David and Jenny after the race. She was totally spent, but she was gracious enough to put up with my video and few brief questions.

She is a wonderful person that deserves nothing but praise. She didn't run and win the 2015 and 2016 Northcoast 24 hour national championships for anyone but herself and those who care about her and her accomplishments.

That she's brilliant, too is a nice addition to her personal resume.

I had a family obligation to attend during this year's Northcoast 24, or I would have been up there again to crew for a couple of friends and talk to David and Jenny. Maybe next year.

Bump. This should be a front page story.

This should have never been a thread.

She's a woman in physics. She's a quota. Ivy Leagues love that. Her "research" is fluff. It's not like she's resolving inconsistencies in quantum gravity.

And she shuffles ultras.

Aerobe wrote:

This should have never been a thread.

She's a woman in physics. She's a quota. Ivy Leagues love that. Her "research" is fluff. It's not like she's resolving inconsistencies in quantum gravity.

And she shuffles ultras.

You don't know what you're talking about. She's a legit international superstar as a research physicist. Universities don't build multimillion dollar labs just to support the research of quota-fillers.

And, yeah, 24 hour races are not run at particularly fast paces. But running ten minute miles for a day straight is still no joke.

800 dude wrote:

She's a legit international superstar as a research physicist. Universities don't build multimillion dollar labs just to support the research of quota-fillers.

You do not know how funding works.

A bit of context, Ann Trason, one of the greatest female ultrarunners in history - with a marathon PB of 2:37 - held the American 24hr record for many years with 143.XX miles, set at the TAC 24hr Championship race hosted by the Sri Chinmoy marathon team in 1989. She did "underperform" for 24hrs, though in that race she split 100mi in 13:55. On paper* a marathon time like that should compute to ~160 miles, but of course, the longer the race, the more variables at play and the more that can go wrong. Only about 14 American men have ever hit 160mi. Jenny's time was stellar. The current AR is held by Sabrina (Moran) Little at just over 150mi, with American (Hungarian born) Katalin Nagy and Traci Falbo nipping at Sabrina's heels.

*it's all easy on paper... armchair ultrarunning at its finest.

Supermassive Aerobe wrote:

800 dude wrote:

She's a legit international superstar as a research physicist. Universities don't build multimillion dollar labs just to support the research of quota-fillers.

You do not know how funding works.

Most good universities provide internal funding in addition to external grants that researchers are awarded. University of British Columbia gave her $10 million:

Absolutely hilarious here how one of the top physicists in her field and one of the top ultramarathoners gets criticized by people who couldn't even dream of achieving 10% of what she has done in both fields.

gfdgfdkgdf wrote:

https://www.physics.harvard.edu/node/695

Awesome! Some people have great time management.

From the linked article we get this:

"USA fields a team of 6 women and 6 men to the World Championship, which is held every odd year. The women's team has won gold at the last 2 World Championships and most of the women on the team (including Prof. Hoffman) have met the A standard for the men's team!"

How can this event be considered elite at all if there are women meeting the Men's A-Standard? In what other footrace competitions can US Women hit the US Men's A Standard?

23424234242 wrote:

Absolutely hilarious here how one of the top physicists in her field and one of the top ultramarathoners gets criticized by people who couldn't even dream of achieving 10% of what she has done in both fields.

Ad hominem. Completely irrelevant. Learn to reason, moran.