HOT Monkey

The HOT Monkey Hills Marathon now has two finishers.
If you have no idea what that means, then continue reading...

Way back in the day, Mike Dobies ran at Mill Creek Park and after a tour of the Monkey Hills, he thought that running them in back to back loops would be great Hardrock Training.

He also commented that a marathon on those hills sounded just stupid enough to get everyone's attention.

He shared this idea with a handful of the NEO Trailers present, and we all thought it was a stupid idea.

Every once in a while someone would bring up the idea of attempting a Monkey Hills Marathon, but no one ever had that much ambition.

Then one year leading up URINEO, Mike said that he was coming down to run the MHM.

That got a few people excited, and the plans were laid for the first ever MHM.

Mike ended up no showing for the attempt, and Jim Harris, Brian Musick, and Jeff Musick didn't know any better and started anyway.

At the end of the day Jim Harris was the only one able to pull off a finish.
It took him 7:40 for 29 laps on the course.

Since then many others have stepped up to see if they were able to pull it off.

The rules for the MHM are that you have to run it on the day of URINEO or the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Not everyone thought that was fair, and after a little creative thinking Todd Hanks came up with the idea of the Hot Monkey.

The stipulations for a HOT Monkey are that the temperature has to reach 80 degrees on the day that you run, and you can only run between sunrise and sunset.

Not surprising that a NEO Trailer can take a stupid idea and dumb it down even further.


Yesterday at 6:08 AM four starters toed the line and started running their laps.

Tim Knapp had a 10:30 AM cut-off and was mainly looking for some 100 mile training.
Tim got in 13 laps for a total of 12.3 miles.

Heath Harris was able to finish in 7:21:29, to not only be the first finisher of a Hot Monkey, but also set the all time MHM course record.

Jim Harris got his Hot Monkey finish in a time of 8:41, for his third official finish on the MHM course.

Frank Horvath made a valiant effort, but was not up to the task, and stopped in his 25th lap when he stood at the top of Pinball Ridge and decided that he didn't want to go down that hill.
Frank gets credit for 24 laps in a time of 10:00 flat, completing 22.8 miles.

The picture above of Rich fondling his monkey, is right after he spanked it.