Hefnawi the Pyramid Climber

Back in the day -- the 1950s and 60s -- Hefnawi Adel Nabi Fayed was known as the Champion of the Great Pyramid, because of his skill at running up and down the pyramid. According to the short bio of him on champion-sportswear.de, he was working as a pyramid guide in the 1940s when it first occurred to him to run up the thing:

"One day I decided to challenge myself and do something different," remembers Hefnawi with a chuckle, "I took off my shoes and started running up. When I came down I found it had taken me eight minutes." The barefoot feat changed his life. Tourists visiting the area would wager on whether he would be able to make it up and back down again. It tums out that coming down is much harder than going up. "It is easy to fall when you are coming down," explains AI-Batal, "because there are sandy pots, and if you trip, the block behind you will push you off because of the angle". He thus memorised a route making the feat possible time and again, and in so doing, he made a lot of money.

Eventually he got his time down to five minutes running up it, and two minutes coming back down. That's got to be the ultimate hill training. Check out his legs in the picture below.

(I found the picture on eBay)

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 23, 2012
Category: Exercise and Fitness

Comments

The dude's a GIANT! I'd rather bet on his being able to jump over that pile of rocks that was built by aliens!

Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 02/23/12 at 09:49 AM

His legs look like those body builders arms! That is a hell of a feat.

Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 02/23/12 at 12:43 PM

WOW! just WOW! 🐛

Posted by Tyrusguy on 02/23/12 at 01:30 PM

A little fiddling with a calculator and some basic physics:

Average speed going up: 1.36 mph (3.14 kph)
Power required to maintain average speed for ascent: 3.5 hp

Something like this is a young man's sport. I think he looks like a runner up for the Steve Reeves lookalike contest.

Posted by KDP on 02/23/12 at 05:19 PM

Yup, the clever bit is taking the whole two minutes to come back down. If you're not very careful, you can make the descent in noticeably less time than that. Especially since your legs are all rubbery from the ascent.

Posted by TheCannyScot in Atlanta, GA on 02/23/12 at 06:57 PM

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