What is Heartbreak Hill?

[Bostondevil]

Do you know? Perhaps I should set up a poll but I don't want to give multiple choice answers. So, just off the cuff, do you know what it is?

[TillyGalore]

Do you know? Perhaps I should set up a poll but I don't want to give multiple choice answers. So, just off the cuff, do you know what it is?

Yup, I know. Can't recall the exact location, but when someone mentions Heartbreak Hill, I know exactly what they're talking about. :)

[2535Miles]

Off the cuff, no. But I just did some googling around and I have decided that I would prefer to avoid Heartbreak Hill.

[Bostondevil]

Forgot to say in my original post that I will let you know why I'm curious about this later.

[devildeac]

Forgot to say in my original post that I will let you know why I'm curious about this later.

Worried about it for your next marathon?

[allenmurray]

Is Heartbreak Hotel at the top?

[devildeac]

Is Heartbreak Hotel at the top?

No, it's down at the end of lonely street...:D

[Indoor66]

No, it's down at the end of lonely street...:D

Actually, Hotel California is on Lonely Street and The House of the Rising Sun is on Heartbreak Hill.

[devildeac]

Actually, Hotel California is on Lonely Street and The House of the Rising Sun is on Heartbreak Hill.

but no streets are mentioned in either of those songs...

do you have specific addresses for those hotels/houses?

[allenmurray]

Where the streets have no names . . .

[devildeac]

Where the streets have no names . . .

Ahh, you, too, huh?

[Bostondevil]

Ha, ha, ha, woo, ha, amusing . . . you didn't answer the question.

(Except for Tilly and Miles, thank you very much.)

[DukeDude]

Do you know? Perhaps I should set up a poll but I don't want to give multiple choice answers. So, just off the cuff, do you know what it is?

I have heard of it, but don't know anything specific about it. Your name was the only hint I needed.

[Jarhead]

Actually, Hotel California is on Lonely Street and The House of the Rising Sun is on Heartbreak Hill.
Ah, yeah. On a dark desert highway...
Welcome to the Hotel California.
Such a lovely place,...

[devildeac]

Do you know? Perhaps I should set up a poll but I don't want to give multiple choice answers. So, just off the cuff, do you know what it is?

Going back about 30 years and the little I recall about marathons (my wife ran 1 and I have run zero), I think it is a point or location on the Boston Marathon course around the 20 mile marker which is an uphill climb and the time/place in the race where/when a lot of folks in years past have chosen to quit or simply turn their run into a walk. I have no idea on what street it is located.

Sorry for the hijack (allenmurray made me do it-his set up was just too good to resist:o)

[TillyGalore]

Going back about 30 years and the little I recall about marathons (my wife ran 1 and I have run zero), I think it is a point or location on the Boston Marathon course around the 20 mile marker which is an uphill climb and the time/place in the race where/when a lot of folks in years past have chosen to quit or simply turn their run into a walk. I have no idea on what street it is located.

Sorry for the hijack (allenmurray made me do it-his set up was just too good to resist:o)

BD,
Isn't it on Comm Ave, aka Commonwealth Ave?

TG

[Jarhead]

I have heard of it, but don't know anything specific about it. Your name was the only hint I needed.
While on a US Navy ship in the Boston Harbor, I remember an old friend from boot camp telling me about a place on the Boston Post Road that was the best place to get scrod. I told him I was raised Catholic, and couldn't go to such places. Oh, the heartbreak, if my mother ever found out.

[phaedrus]

My Dad told me about the Boston Marathon course, "By the time the [up] hills come, you'll be praying for them." Running the first 16 miles downhill isn't as easy as it sounds.

[Windsor]

Between mile 20 and 21.

[Olympic Fan]

If you are talking about the 'Heartbreak Hill' of Boston Marathon fame, that's actually Chesnut Hill ... the location of Boston College. The slight rise (it's not really much of a hill) occurs just as the race passes the campus ... although it's not a steep elevation, after 20 miles, the long, slow rise can be, well, heartbreaking.

Heartbreak Hill is also the name Army grunts who captured it gave to a hill in Korea (fictionally portrayed in the film "Pork Chop Hill."). The real battle is referenced in the 1986 "Heartbreak Ridge" -- a so-bad-its-funny Clint Eastwood movie. The film is actually an update on Sands of Iwo Jima about a rough, tough drill sergeant (who won the medal of honor on Heartbreak Hill in Korea) who whips his platoon of slackers into shape, then leads them into combat. Only at the end, when they face the horror and reality of combat do they come to understand how vital his toughness was.

Of course, in the original, John Wayne had to toughen his kids up for Iwo Jima, a real bloodbath in WWII. In some of the better knockoffs -- the Boys of Company C, Full-Metal Jacket -- the training prepares them for the horrors of Vietnam (although Kubrick turns the genre on its head, when the suitably toughened Marines get their butts kicked by a 14-year-old Vietnamese girl with a bolt-action rife).

In Heartbreak Ridge, the boys-turned-into-men get their baptism of fire ... in Grenada. It's like a weekend of Club Med. A suitable ending for a movie that spends half its time with Eastwood reading women's magazines in an attempt to win ex-wife Marsha Mason back (from Bo Svenson, who played the leader of the 'Good Ol Boys' in the original Blues Brothers).

Frankly, I prefer another strain of military-training movies -- the comedy that never real pays off in combat. I guess the forerunner of this genre is "See Here, Private Hargrove", written by Marion Hargrove (who wrote the book to the musical "Music Man"). It would include Bob Hope's "Caught in the Draft" and Abbott and Costello's "Buck Privates". I think we could also add Neil Simon's "Bilioxi Blues" to the list.

I'd reserve the incomparable "Stripes" for the first genre -- since it does pay off with combat (of a sort). Of course, it's an intentional parody of the genre, which puts it miles ahead of the Eastwood film, which takes itself oh-so-seriously.

[Johnboy]

. . . if you are referring to the Boston marathon. I've never run it, though.

[Bostondevil]

If you are talking about the 'Heartbreak Hill' of Boston Marathon fame, that's actually Chesnut Hill ... the location of Boston College. The slight rise (it's not really much of a hill) . . .

Yeah? You try running up it.

[TillyGalore]

Yeah? You try running up it.

IIRC running up Heartbreak Hill isn't so bad. It's the 20 or so miles you have to run BEFORE you run up Heartbreak Hill that are the killer. :(

[DukieInKansas]

Thanks Olympic Fan - I immediately thought of the Korean War when I saw the question. I think it was actually Heartbreak Ridge, and not Hill, but that was my first thought. Since I've never been to Boston, or run a marathon, I didn't make the connection to the Boston Marathon.

[OldPhiKap]

I found my thrill
on Blueberry Hill.


But Grant Hill's the best.

[dukemomLA]

Definitely our "non-war" in Korea. Adopted later for Chestnut Hill during the Boston Marathon.

[Bostondevil]

I'm giving up Bobby Hurley to post this, sigh. Oh well, I was Bobby Hurley for a whole day.

OK, the reason I asked this question was because, as readers of the LTE may remember, my latest play is entitled Heartbreak Hill. One of my friends who read it commented that no one outside of Boston would get the reference. I thought, bah, sure they will. Well, some will. I'm not changing the title though.

Heartbreak Hill is a notorious section of the Boston Marathon between miles 20 and 21. It stops before you get to Boston College. The stretch of the course right by the campus is actually downhill. Anyway, the name comes from an incident that happened in the 1936 Boston Marathon involving Johnny Kelley, so, any Korean War references copied Boston. By itself it might not be much of an incline but taken together with the rest of the Newton hills starting at mile 16, it's the last of about 5 miles of running uphill so it feels awfully steep.

[devildeac]

I'm giving up Bobby Hurley to post this, sigh. Oh well, I was Bobby Hurley for a whole day.

OK, the reason I asked this question was because, as readers of the LTE may remember, my latest play is entitled Heartbreak Hill. One of my friends who read it commented that no one outside of Boston would get the reference. I thought, bah, sure they will. Well, some will. I'm not changing the title though.

Heartbreak Hill is a notorious section of the Boston Marathon between miles 20 and 21. It stops before you get to Boston College. The stretch of the course right by the campus is actually downhill. Anyway, the name comes from an incident that happened in the 1936 Boston Marathon involving Johnny Kelley, so, any Korean War references copied Boston. By itself it might not be much of an incline but taken together with the rest of the Newton hills starting at mile 16, it's the last of about 5 miles of running uphill so it feels awfully steep.

Well, did we (individually and/or collectively) answer your question to your satisfaction? If so, what do we get:D? A scarf? Several Attaboys/girls?

[Bostondevil]

I'm still knitting the first 3 scarves. I don't want to dig myself too deep a hole.

OK, attaboy.

I didn't count and there were some less than serious replies but I'm guessing 1/3 to 1/2 of readers knew that it had something to do with the Boston Marathon. Good enough but lower than I expected.

[throatybeard]

I found my thrill
on Blueberry Hill.

http://www.craftsreport.com/june06/life_loop_blueberry.jpg