Thursday, March 5, 2009

Umstead Marathon Elevation Profile

It is 2 days until The Umstead Marathon , and now that training is over and I am forced to rest, I am left with nothing to do but obsess about the the race. So this post is for my fellow running geeks who will do more analysis and strategizing for a run than was done for the Normandy Invasion.

Elevation:
I ran Umstead last year, and I took the track from my GPS watch, and uploaded it to this website MapMyRun. This website can create an elevation profile based on the track. It uses actual elevation maps instead of the ridiculously bad recorded elevation data from the watch. The result isn't that accurate but it does give a rough idea.

Umstead Marathon Elevation profile (click for bigger picture)
Unfortunately it smooths over all of the much shorter, steeper hills, like Bubble's favorite "The BMF" or "Big Mother F%#$er" on Turkey Creek. But it does show that very little of the course is flat, and that you are either going up or down. To calculate the absolute "hilliness" of the course we apply a fast Fourier transform (FFT) to the curve and derive the coefficient of the gradient and multiply by an integral of the inclines divided by the declines over distance. The result: pretty damn hilly. To get a better idea, let's compare it to the most well known marathon, Boston, which has a reputation of being "hilly":


Boston Marathon. I think the little pimple towards
the end is the Legendary "Heart Break Hill"
Hmmm. It looks like if you dropped a marble at the start of Boston, it could roll on it's own to a 3:15 finish without much effort. OK, so Umstead is hillier than the typically wimpy city road race, but for you runners who whine about every little incline (Shannon), lets put it into perspective. Here is the Grandfather Mountain marathon held in Boone, NC:



Grandfather Mountain
The red indicates some pretty steep inclines. So Umstead is not even the hilliest marathon in NC. So what is a really hilly course? How about Pikes Peek:



Pikes Peek Marathon
They had to invent new colors just to represent this one. In case you didn't notice, all of these pictures are at a different scale which makes it hard to compare. So lets put them at the same scale:


Comparing Umstead to Boston, Grandfather Mountain, and Pikes Peek


So to every one who is running Umstead this weekend, before you start complaining when you are trudging up Cedar Ridge, think of this picture and be glad.

10 comments:

  1. okay, okay. I will try hard not to complain on the uphills. But screw Pikes Peek. That just makes me angry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Colorful elevations- looking forward to the slight downhill finish
    -see you tomorrow!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very neat! Any chance you could put Grandfarther Mt on the same scale too!

    This was my first Umstead Marathon and I struggled!

    ReplyDelete
  4. WOW! Will someone please shoot me if I ever even mention running Pikes Peak! Grandfather looks like way then I expected! This is really cool . . . now I want to see all the races I've done in a similar plot!! Very interesting Anthony! Thanks . . . Woodman!

    ReplyDelete
  5. You're foolish to blow off Boston like you did, which is why it turns "tough" course runners into mints meat EVERY year-don't be fooled by it's profle! Even Ryan Hall who ran it in practice, trained for it after, still said aftward, "It's much harder a course than I thought." It's harder on your legs to run down hill than up, especially at the marathon distance.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have run Boston and I have run Umstead. Umstead is harder. I ran Boston with a stress fracture in my foot. It was not my best time, but I completed it and walked the entire Boston historical tour later that day. I ran Umstead and could barely walk around the shopping plaza with my Mom afterwards.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just signed up for the Uwharrie 20 miler, (which I've never run)and for Umstead (to run it my 3rd time), and compared the map elevations. Umstead may be a tough mutha', and we have some unfinished business, that course and I, but the Uwharrie 20. . . . That is going to be a character builder.

    ReplyDelete
  9. These elevation profiles are so cool, especially the comparison at the end. I'll remember not to mentally complain on March 6 as we all try to float over the "bumps" at Umstead. Now I'd better go out there and do another workout up Wheel Fell Off (Cedar Ridge) and then on up and over Graveyard.
    Luckily, my legs are being saved from Uwharrie this year, just four weeks before. Have fun down there in Montgomery County!

    ReplyDelete

Sorry. Had to enable that awful word verification due to spam.