Pikes Peak Ascent

Colorado, USA

• Date: 17 September 2022 • Entry Cost: £134 • pikespeakmarathon.org/ascent

This brute of a mountain race is surely the toughest half marathon on the planet. Altitude sickness, lightning strikes and a 20°C temperature change from start to finish – this race has got it all. Beginning at Manitous Springs City Hall at 6,300ft, competitors race into ever thinner air on the lung-puncturing climb to the 14,050ft summit of Pike’s Peak. The average grade is 11%, but the worst is saved to last, with a final section of 32 switchbacks known as the ‘Golden Steps’, including groin-wincing step-ups of 15 inches.

Reached the summit and still feel energetic? Enroll yourself in the Pike’s Peak Marathon next year. Race the entire climb, then kamikaze another half marathon back down past slower competitors to the start line.

When Zebulon Pike, who the mountain would eventually be named after, first unsuccessfully tried to climb Pike’s Peak in deep snow in 1806, he famously declared no one would ever reach the summit.