--General Info--
7A+ is a bouldering(climbing) problem difficulty. I have several hundred total hours of bouldering experience, including local competitions and one open. I have completed only one 7A in my life (and dislocated a hip in the process, but now I am fully healed). In the open competition I performed better than any climber in a group with <=1y experience (at the moment i had 13 months of experience).
I have never run a marathon, the longest run was 11km in 1h10m.
I had a big gap in both activities, more than 3y. Just one 4k run last month, and couple visits to bouldering gym with friends over the span, no particularly intense training.
--Difficulty--
Here is my subjective way to describe a difficulty of projects as a single number. I have noticed that the projects that require a lot of effort (are subjectively hard, does not matter whether physically or mentally) require frequent rest. If the action is "twice" easier, i can concentrate on it 4 times longer without needing a rest.
The formula is:
Sum_over_sessions(sqrt(session_length)).
If I do something for 16 minutes, then have a pause, and then finish the task after 25 more minutes, then i say the difficulty was sqrt16+sqrt25=9.
On the other hand if a task required 120 minutes, but i had not temptation to pause and completed the task in one go, its difficulty is just ~11.
The formula is additive, if the project consisted of several stages, then the final total difficulty is the sum of stages' difficulties.
This formula is only designed to reflect my personal experiences and was always accurate. Even if it stops reflecting my experience well, you still predict just the number comparison.
In case of running, sitting on any surface is consireder a pause.
In climbing you sometimes sit and think about the problem (which is also important part), so the criterium for a pause is grabbing a phone to surf the internet (that is when both physical and mental rest begins).
Anything that i consider investment in the target can be counted as a session. For example, having a leg day in gym can count towards marathon, even if no treadmill was involved.
--Time--
I predict that both targets will take ~3y of training. But i want to be optimistic so the market is set to close at the end of 2026. Will be extended if needed.
Can be resolved sooner if one target is achieved and the other already has higher difficulty.
Update 2025-10-25 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Only training sessions after market creation are counted in the difficulty calculation. The difficulty is tracked from the creator's current skill level, not from absolute zero.
Update 2025-10-26 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): No target time will be set for the marathon. The creator views setting a target time for marathon as equivalent to setting a number of attempts for a single 7A+ problem. The market will compare difficulty based on the formula in the description, tracking maximum distance over time for running (not finish times).
1,000I have realised that the number should be better called Effort. And if you divide Effort by TotalTime then you get a value betwern 0 and 1, where smaller values represent easier things, and bigger values represent more difficult things.
Not going to change anything in the market, but in the future i may call this value, given by the formula, "Effort".
If you have a reasonable level of baseline activity/fitness, you can run a marathon within 6 months or so if you are dedicated to training (look up a beginner marathon plan online).
...though if you have some previous experience, I suspect you could also climb at least one 7A+ with the same amount of intentional training time in 6 months, plus finding a problem that suits your strengths and is relatively easy for the grade.
@Henry38hw Just as you did set a target difficulty for climbing (7A), maybe you could/should also put a target time for the marathon?
@Primer in my view setting a target time for marathon is equivalent to setting a number of attempts for a single 7A+ problem.
It could also be a valid market with target time (people could follow my finish times over months), but I felt this was a balanced question, taking into account my explosive, not endurance physique. (People can follow the maximum distance I can run over months).
If I were to set both timelimit X on the run and attempt limit Y on the boulder, then I would have to arbitraty choose X and Y, which is a pain for perfectionist.
@Henry38hw I suggest X=6:00 and Y=100 ๐
Maybe I underestimate the difficulty of a Marathon, but maybe people saying "I'm gonna do a Marathon" mean something slightly different than "reach the finish line within the cutoff time". Some friends of mine once did a Marathon somewhere around 4:30-5:00 after a few months of training, and I always wondered "Could they have made it with 1 month of training in 7 or 8 hours?" Yeah, that would be mostly quick walking and maybe a little light jogging mixed in, but I feel like they could have? But I also feel like that wouldn't be what they had in mind, they wanted to actually run for 42 kilometers, which is way way harder than 8 hours of walking.
In other words: Let's say in 2 years you finish your first Marathon in 5:20 and the project difficulty was 500, what's the project difficulty for a Marathon in 7:00? With bouldering, you can draw lots of samples, you can easily try a 7A+ every week, so your difficulty measure will work fine. With a Marathon, it makes way less sense.
That being said: I really like your difficulty formula! I'm probably too... old(?) to make that much use of it myself (I don't have any data about time spent doing x, and I'd have to make a lot of conscious effort to generate relevant data, whereas it seems younger people more often regularly track their lives), but it has been fun to brainstorm possible applications. If one day you decide to publish some of your project difficulties, please ping me, I'd love to learn more about this.
I have used this formula only for projects and small homeworks at university, to compare different subjects. But i did not save the numbers. It was more of a recreational thing - it is fun to see the results, conclude what exceeded expectations, and forget.
Tracking a lot of things was distracting (and you feel bad when you forget to add couple sessions), so i stoped. I hate to track things myself, but both running and bouldering are rare enough to not bother me. I would be happy to find another universal method to track effort, but so fsr this formula reflects my feelings best.
One thing that i remember approximately, is a 3d rendered i have written in C language, it was approximately difficulty 70-90 according to my formula, and that reflected well that the job was interesting and thus mentally easy - i could sit for 5 hours straight and make progress.
Another random thing: I tried to find how much effort unlocking the last two joker in game Balatro would take, but I gave up and deleted the game after diff=42.
I honestly did not understand your concern. I can try 7A+ every week, and i can try to raise my maximum distance-before-i-slow-down-to-walk every week too.
I agree that marathon in 5 is a different difficulty than marathon in 6, which itself is more difficult than just a marathon without walking. But you can always add new limitations, which would add both mental and physical load (like having to finish in a month, or doing a norwegian marathon where the path goes up and down the mountains several times). I am not interested in increasing the stakes before i learn to at least cross the finish line. Just finishing is already an achievement to me, just like just finishing a 7A+.
Btw, i think that with a hard deadline my formula does not reflect difficulty well, because it does not capture the stress of time pressure at all.
@Henry38hw I think I'm gonna try to use your difficulty once I find the time to learn to juggle 5 balls, and compare with teaching my daughter to juggle 3 balls ๐
and i can try to raise my maximum distance-before-i-slow-down-to-walk
Ok, so this is not "start at a Marathon and reach the finish line before cutoff time" (you could spend some time running, jogging or just walking), but "spend 42km actually running". That's the difference I was trying (and obviously failing) to communicate.