Rising to the challenge
How far would you go for a belt buckle? Ten miles? Twenty? Does 100 sound too far? How about if you had to do it on foot? In less than 25 hours? At mountain-top elevation? Sure, it sounds extreme, but for four Harvard students, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. The students — Wyss Institute postdoctoral fellow Maartje Bastings; Max Darnell, a graduate student at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Charles Hornbaker, an M.B.A. candidate at Harvard Business School; and Kyle Pietari of Harvard Law School — were among the finishers of the famed Leadville Trail 100 Run last month, a 100-mile race through the mountains of Colorado. The fastest of the four, Pietari, finished in second place, crossing the line in just 18:16. Hornbaker and Darnell both finished in 23-plus hours — 23:08 and 23:50, respectively —with Bastings close behind at 24:15. For Darnell, two...