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UW-Eau Claire professor maps Olympic Marathon

Posted by Tom Held on March 20, 2012

marathons, Olympics

Runners in the 2012 Olympic Marathon will build their game plans on the maps produced by a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor known as Mr. Marathon.

Sean Hartnett, a geography expert, has been tapped by Olympic organizers to produce a detailed map of the course showing the elevation changes, turns and expected wind direction. His work has often been used to produce pacing charts for the world’s best marathoners.

He explained the importance in a story published by the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. "For these guys it's like surgery in terms of what type of preparation they want," he said.

Hartnett has covered more than 100 major marathons for Track & Field News, and provided his scouting reports to former world record holder Haile Gebrselassie.

“I’ve covered every major marathon since 1999 and what I’ll do is make a map of the race with all the splits in different color coding and I’ll show how the race develops on a map through a number of pictures,” he told SpikesMag.com.