FAQs

What is this?

What do you mean? It’s a race…sort of… I mean its like a race.

Yeah exactly what the hell is this?

Yeah ok, its like the Nonsense. It’s a weird idea we had. It’s based on The Naismith Rule. The Naismith rule describes the perfect relationship between going up and going forward. The Nonsense was an event on one axis. This is an event on two.

One Naismith is 3 horizontal miles and 2,000 vertical feet. Any time those two distances are complete you have completed a Naismith (N). Completing both of them in under an hour is a Classic Naismith (CN).

Are you going to try to make this a thing…

Yes…I am. Here are some more ways to use this new unit of measure. If you ran 6 miles and 4,00 feet in an hour you might say….

”I crushed 2N in an hour. My first double Naismith!”

Or say you went for a 12 hour Naismith Challenge…you might say"

”Hit 11.24N for the 12 hour. Probably had a little more gas in the tank but my running partner was eaten by a bear and it killed my mood”

Oh yeah and fractions. You can have a fraction of a Naismith. You can only accrue a full Naismith by completing both metrics however you can get a fractional Naismith for additional uncompleted distance under a full N. It is calculated as follows (with a max of .5 per side)

((horizontal distance / 3) / 2) + ((vertical distance /2,000)/2)

Where the hell is this coming from?

Blame NNRC member Dan Green mostly….and William Naismith a bit. Dan is the one who found the Naismith Rule and suggested it as the perfect running measurement.

William Naismith is an obscure Scottish mountaineer who came up with the metric.

I don’t want to know anymore

Too bad, check out these quotes about this lunatic”

”Before he was 14, Naismith had made a winter ascent of Beinn Bhreac. Always renowned for his walking abilities in general, in 1879 at the age of 23 he walked from his Hamilton home to the summit of Tinto and back a distance of 56 miles.”

”When asked by a nephew what food he carried, he replied that he found a bag of raisins in his pocket quite good.”

Just a real solid walker and raisin snacker with a penchant for basic algebra.

Fine…I’ll do it. How do I do it?

Complete 3 Miles and 2,000 vertical feet any way you choose. You can do it on a treadmill, you can run up a mountain, you can run up some stairs and around a track. Any way you want to get to 3 Miles and 2,00 vertical feet you do it. You have 1 hour to do this as much as you want.

I live on a flat barren landscape like a desert or anywhere in Florida

Bummer….all vertical counts though. Go up a 10 foot ladder 200 times! That could be fun. Any way you get above the ground counts.

Can I ride an elevator / chairlift / helicopter?

Sure but you only get credit for distance and vertical under human power. You can run up the stairs and take the elevator down however the time in the elevator on the way down does count against your hour.

What if there is a tie?

If there is a tie in any division the tie must be settled by a 16oz liquid chug race. The liquid may be water or beer as decided by the tieees (or a coin flip).

Will there be awards?

Maybe? Probably? If there are awards they will be weird and likely undesirable