[ckissick]

I don't understand what makes it so hard. To finish in 60 hours, you have to maintain a pace of 2 mph. That's not very fast.

The Badwater (Death Valley) Ultramarathon is 135 miles long with 13,000 feet of elevation gain, and run in July when it's usually 120 degrees or more. And people finish it in well under 30 hours. The record is 21:33. That's a pace of over 6 mph.

The Barkley Marathon must harder, but how is that possible? It must be the terrain. The Badwater is on roads and good trails, while the Barkley appears to be on very steep terrain in forests with no or few trails.

I posted a thread recently about my excursion into a wildfire zone that required scaling hillsides so steep I had to cut foot holds in the ground and use my hands. I probably covered no more than 3 miles, but I was more wiped out than I had been on a 17 mile hike up and down Mt. Diablo, with 4100 feet of vertical. So yeah, it must be the terrain.