On November 11th, I ran into the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens finishing my first Marathon in 5 hours 42 minutes.

And almost immediately the first question that came to mind was: 

Was the Marathon harder than the death ride?

So to put things in perspective. 

The Athens Classic Marathon is one of the hardest marathons out there. The distance is standard, but there is a non-standard 20km up hill section with a total 800 foot elevation gain. 

The Death Ride on the other hand has 128 miles of biking (206km), an elevation gain of 15,287 feet (4660m) and is at an altitude of 5500 feet. 

Both of these are insane events for an amateur athlete to complete. 

They both require a lot of fitness and a level of pain tolerance that is almost inhuman. 

So the winner (or loser)? 

My vote is for the Death Ride. In the Athens Marathon there where several overweight fat guys were actually able to finish the run in less than 7 hours. On the other hand I was, literally, the fattest guy to finish the Death Ride. And by finish I mean cross over the fifth peak. I did not actually ride back down to the finish line because of a “torn/sprained/stretch badly” chest muscle that prevented me from breathing deeply. 

My wife, on the other hand, asks if the difference was related to the training regime. The Death Ride training regime was intense but it was less intense than the Athens Classic Marathon. For the Death Ride we biked three times a week. For the Marathon I ran four times a week and biked on Sundays. So it is possible that I was in better shape at the start of the Marathon than I was at the start of the Death Ride. 

I fear that what I am doing is becoming the start of a bad joke: a swimmer, a cyclist and a runner walk into a bar and argue over whose sport is harder… a few weeks later the ironman triathlon is born. 

But… 

What I remember about the Death Ride is at the beginning of the ride I was in the best shape of my life. At the end of the ride I was more broken than I have ever been. I crawled into a bed and slept for hours. For the next five days my brain was shut down as my body tried to recover from the exertion.

What I remember from the Marathon is that the night of the Marathon I went to a kid’s party with my son, the next day I went for a walk etc, etc. etc. 

Training or effort? 

Who knows… But I suppose I could start training for the death ride and find out….