It's interesting to note that in every year that someone finishes, they add additional parts to the course making it more difficult for the competitors in the following year.
In 2013, Nick Hollon finished in 57:41 and Travis Wildeboer in 58:41. A new hill was added, "foolish stu", increasing the total climb to over 60,000 feet.
In 2014, Jared Campbell got his second finish in 57:50. Another new hill, Hiram's Vertical Smile, brings the total climb to 62,680 ft.[1]
I think this "addition" of complexities needs to be treated as totally new course each time such addition is made.
Otherwise previous finishers (total respect to them of course) would claim to do something that new participants cannot using the identical name of event/race. Which in fact is totally different race by now.
Marathon is not adding extra 10km every year to compensate for too many finishers.
Barkley is not a sports competition in traditional sense. It is more like an ultra-ultra running event meets performance art and the very point of the event is to make it harder. Participants understand this and they are not there to compare their performance (sic) to the previous competitors.
Also, competitors are screened by totally different criteria than their previous ultra running successes: they have to write a letter to the organizer explaining why they should participate. Reasons can be something personal, not that they won Spartathlon in Greece in 2010.
>I think this "addition" of complexities needs to be treated as totally new course each time such addition is made.
I'm a trail runner and this isn't done, probably because conditions are always different year to year, so a modified route is just another misc change along with weather conditions which arguably would introduce more variance. Courses vary slightly all the time, due to trail conditions, environment and permit/access issues, plus minor rerouting around trail sections that are damaged or under repair, etc.
Western States, probably the most famous trail ultra, has had several minor route changes (due to fires, floods, snow, etc) in its history. They do not keep separate records for every variation of the route. Even Leadville rerouted the turnaround last year, which caused some confusion (including Krar technically going off course before regaining the route).
In the case of Barkley, the event is already pathologically designed so making it slightly tougher after each finisher is one of the quirks of the event. Nobody runs Barkley for time, just finishing is a huge deal (hence 14 or whatever finishers in 30 years). Heck, just completing the "fun run" (3 laps within the time limit) yields bragging rights, among trail runners at least. ;)
I would agree with you if the competitors were in any way competing on time over the course of multiple years, but in reality they aren't. It's a one time race, repeated annually, and each course & victory stands alone. (Not like other extreme ultras like the Leadville 100, etc, where there absolutely is competition each year to lower the record.)
I don't think many ultra runners would consider Leadville extreme. It's mostly fire roads. Ever since the buy-out from Lifetime Fitness, the top runners seem to skip the event.
It's not the case that the race gets made longer each year, or ever. It is, however, rerouted to some extent each year. This is because part of the race is testing orienteering and route-finding skills. If it used same course every year people who returned to run again would have unfair advantage over the new people. Because the race director has a sense of humor, he may well choose to add elevation gain if too many people are doing well. His quip when people stop after one of the loops, unable to go on, "My only regret is that you could not suffer more."
They're not adding the extra obstacles to jump over either.
It's no brainer to come up with unfinishable course to "test the limits".
Just add extra hill here and there, keep same time limit and call it a day with "mountains won!" statement.
Granted, this approach has it's own passionate followers and so it runs!
Same sentiment; I'm really wondering how they managed to find 60kft of gain in (at best) hilly Tennessee. Then again, if you find a steep enough hill and run up and down it enough times (which it sounds like they do), I guess that would do it.
While I've no doubt this is a very difficult challenge, it seems contrived, and the comparisons to things like Everest are flippant. For one thing, you don't have to contend with the extreme weather of Everest, or the lack of oxygen, which you won't even get anywhere near because you never actually get anywhere near 8kft in altitude. Cross country hiking through brush? Yeah, I can do that; I avoid it when possible because that's not my idea of a good time and there are more interesting challenges.
Resembles one of my universities where they were lowering valuation of problems after exams depending on success rate (e.g. a problem worth 4 points was reduced to 0.8 if too many people had it correctly, and a problem worth of 0.6 points rose to 5 points if almost nobody had it).
Reminds me of a college exam I had on unix administration - 6 questions, 8 hours time limit, open book, open internet, open everything, you could even call your dad to ask for help or collaborate with classmates - yet only 2 people out of 30 passed. The highest score was 53%. Yet the teacher was able to demonstrate correct solutions for all the problems.
They're aiming for a course that is consistently _just_ at the limits of what the racers can accomplish. If they wanted a track that no one could beat, they would just add 50 extra miles...
Considering that 60k feet is well above the altitude at which most commercial planes fly, does anyone find the concept of "total climb" a little misleading? If they're basing it only on all the "ascents", then wouldn't going up and down one foot for 60,000 times also count as "60,000 feet of total climb"?
Also, it's too bad humans don't have regenerative braking...
What measurement would you use instead to represent the amount of climbing involved in a route?
The main issue I have with this "total climb" measurement is that it appears to depend on the "sampling frequency" - the closer together the points you sample the altitude of, the more rough the surface appears, and thus the more ups (and downs) to contribute to the measurement. It adds up, so the measurement isn't very meaningful without mentioning the sampling frequency used. Maximum altitude difference might be a bit better.
Yes. You try doing 60,000 step-ups and report back how easy that was.
I'm not saying it's easy, but this...
/\/\/\/\/\/\
...would be easier than this...
/\ /\ /\
/ \/ \/ \
...and easier than this
/\ /\
/ \ / \
/ \/ \
or even this
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
despite them all having the same "total climb". To take this to the extreme, consider a surface that varies up and down by 1 inch every inch. Run 60,000 feet on this surface, and you'll have achieved "60,000 feet of total climb."
The highest resolution is 1 meter (but they don't have that data for the entire US).
The crappiness of GPS based total elevation gain is pretty well understood, so they probably wouldn't use that. So as long as they used data (or a topo map) instead of GPS, you can assume that the sampling frequency was not ridiculous (and it probably only includes gain that is apparent over something like 10 or 30 feet).
I am -very much- not an expert but I suspect the difficulty profile is more like a hump than an upward slope - going downhill works different muscles than uphill and frequent* switching between the two seems like it would put more stress on you than uphill[hours]+downhill[hours] due to having two sets of muscles in use, less time for recovery, less time for warming up, etc.
(This is where we need a real physio / doctor / anatomist!)
Its an old riddle: what is the length of the coastline of Britain? Measure it by miles, you get one number. Measure by inches, another number. Measure the line that wriggles around every grain of sand at the waterline on every beach, you get 10X the number.
I think races are counting from inflection point to inflection point or something. Still, its arbitrary.
From a strictly theoretical point of view, yes, but in practice this isn't a concern. No-one measures the individual pebbles on the trail. Generally, the "feet of climbing" is measured vertically from the valley bottom to mountain top.
Except the Earth isn't actually shaped like this. Even less so, paths intended for running (or cycling). The numbers are dominated by real altitude gain, and anything missed or contributed by uneven road surface is minor by comparison.
It's a pretty standard way of counting for outdoorsy stuff in my experience. Most hiking routes will quote the total elevation gain, skiers and snowboarders track downhill vertical, and so on.
It would pretty misleading to quote net elevation for hikes. A loop up a mountain and back would have a net gain of 0' even if you hiked 2000' to the peak.
I don't feel it's misleading. If you climbed 60k in N hours, you did it, regardless of whether it was interspersed with descent. At least I don't see a difference.
I guess the only way it is a strange comparison is if you are imagining a 60,000ft high mountain in which case the two things are quite different. I wouldn't relish either challenge, but climbing a 60,000ft mountain would be a much greater challenge due to the altitude (which would include small inconveniences like your blood boiling!)
It is quite useless to a discussion to critique an established technique like this without offering alternative or explanation.
Obviously it is difficult to give objective ratings to very different kinds of elevation gain. 10 meters of steps up to McDonalds are easier then 10meters of vertical concrete wall, we all know this.
It is quite obvious you have no experience with this.
In 2013, Nick Hollon finished in 57:41 and Travis Wildeboer in 58:41. A new hill was added, "foolish stu", increasing the total climb to over 60,000 feet.
In 2014, Jared Campbell got his second finish in 57:50. Another new hill, Hiram's Vertical Smile, brings the total climb to 62,680 ft.[1]
1- http://www.mattmahoney.net/barkley/