The Boston Marathon is coming up soon. It's kind of a big deal, I guess.

It's certainly a big, and highly competitive race, and the weather promises to be pretty foul this year. I'm always impressed by how fast some people can run 26.2 miles, and it's great to see so many people take interest in a foot race. I have to smile, though, when I hear people talk about how tough the course is. I haven't run it, so I probably should keep my thoughts to myself, but that's just not my nature. I've got a big mouth. In this case, I will let pictures do the talking. Here's the elevation for the Boston Marathon. I took the image from the Boston Globe website; their chart is more clear than the official race site chart:

Notice that it starts at 490 feet, and ends at 10. In between, there's an elevation gain of 295 feet.

Here's the elevation chart for the Greylock Marathon, which is considered fairly tough by trail race standards. Note that the vertical scale is completely different:

 

 Enough said.