The third annual Bunker Hill Endurance Challenge took place earlier this month after a weather-related delay. Thirteen participants raced up and down the hill as many times as they could within six hours. But this year, no one won.
Albert Burnham, recreation manager with the city’s Department of Parks, Culture and Recreation, said at the annual event, a winner is declared when someone completes a full marathon — that’s 13 trips up and down.
“It kind of stemmed out of the desire locally from some of the runners that we had to see a marathon distance event,” Burnham said. “But knowing that we don't have that many folks who are up to doing a marathon every summer, we kind of conceived this idea of doing a challenge that has a marathon distance possible, but with Bunker Hill, it's two miles per lap, and so just challenging folks to see how many laps they can do in the allotted time period.”
But Burnham said this year, for the first time, no one completed a full marathon. Three participants — Natoshia Burdick, Will Day and Sean Peters — did complete seven full laps before the rainy weather hit.
Overall, Burnham said, participants in the challenge completed 38 laps of the hill, for a total of 76 miles.
