Essentially, it's the first 3.1 miles of the famed five mile course. When the men's college teams compete, they pass through the 5,000m finish area, then another two-mile loop remains. The flats are repeated, then along the cowpath a sharp left is taken up onto the infamous Cemetery Hill, a steep, rocky incline about 4.2m into the college run. Its peak stands 150 feet above sea level. It's a killer alright, and the jibes abound.
Runners die up there.
They're dead and buried, laid to rest. Its name is so perfectly suited for the cross country assignment that one would assume running there had some historical relationship to it. Cemetery Hill was once known as Vault Hill. It is the family burial plot of the Van Cortlandt family, wealthy Dutch settlers after whom the park is named. Orloff Van Cortlandt, a Dutchman, arrived in New Amsterdam in 1638 and founded a dynasty which at one time owned about 200 square miles of land.