Elevation Changes

[guest@endurance.net]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net
Rides 2 Far wrote:

>>Yeah, I just saw it in Endurance World.  It looked like the whole
thing is downhill. >g<  In general, I find elevation profiles
deceptive.  Seems like they seldom feel like they look on paper.
The profile of the Pan Am looked like the EKG sheet of a person
suffering a heart attack. I almost had one looking at it.<<

That is because you can make virtually ANY (even one that is almost
totally flat) look like it goes up and down like a yo-yo if you have
small enough increments on the vertical axis.  Note that the elevation
profile of the PAC has just over 1000 feet of elevation change from top to
bottom of the vertical axis, while the Tevis one has just over 6,000
feet (and yes, Tevis is a VERY downhill course, if you start at ~7000
feet and end up at ~2500 feet you know you have to be doing more going
down than going up :)).

The "14,000 feet of total elevation gain" can also be a deceptive number
when making comparisons.  As it depends on how much elevation gain (loss)
you require before it "counts."  Most of the modern elevation gain
tracking devices that riders carry with them to discover this consider
10 feet to be countable (and will cause the profile to go up and down
with every bump in the trail :), while it is most likely that the
cumulative elevation gain/loss for Tevis (calculated many years
ago--before modern devices?) had somebody sitting down with a topo map
and the trail need to go either up or down about 100 feet before it
"counted."

This will, of course, make the profile look less like an EKG chart, and
it will also make the cumulative total significantly less.

So, in order to make valid comparisons, in addition to knowing how
much elevation "gain" there was, you also need to know the methodology
for arriving at this number, because it depends very much on how much
gain there needs to be for it to be considered a gain.  Obviously, it
you count every six inches as a change in elevation, you are going to
come up with a VASTLY different number than if you only count it if
the trail goes up atleast 1,000 feet.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  While using humidity as a mountain can provide the cardiovascular
conditioning for "hill work," it won't condition the muscle groups for
it.  Just as I found that galloping up and down mountains, while it
provides great cardiovascular conditioning for my horse, did virtually
nothing for preparing the muscles for long, flat work.