I missed my 9:30 bedtime again last night, but only by 3 minutes. My sleep quality wasn't the best as I was cold (I had a load of laundry in the dryer and was down to the pajama dregs) and not used to going to going bed that early. I still felt better than yesterday, so we'll see how the experiment goes. Of course, I would have made it to bed on time if hadn't spent 10-15 minutes pouring over old heart rate files dealing the following conundrum.
Of course, I'm sure I could find a message board to post on somewhere, but it just felt like it would be more fun to submit it to the vast endurance-racing knowledge of the blogosphere. The question: Why are the finish times for the Lumberjack about 1.5 hours faster than the Mohican on average, despite the fact that the Lumberjack has 60 more miles of singletrack and 2000 more feet of climbing (at least according the respective race websites)?I started discussing this with a fellow Bloomington MTB-chick and aspiring edurance racer a few weeks ago. Our discussion was based purely on percentage of singetrack and we came to the conclusion that the Mohican must be much more climby.
I filed it away in my brain until after what I considered to be a very climby dirt road ride that came in at about 4000 ft. over 45 miles. So I decided to check out the course description on the Lumberjack website. Low and behold, it reported 13,000 ft of climbing over 100 miles, a much bigger percentage than my training ride.
So now I'm just really confused. Can someone whose experienced these races please explain to me "What's up with that?"
4 comments:
I did both races last year. The answer is:
1. Mohican singletrack is a lot harder - more twisty, more rocks, roots, tight turns, mud, etc. The LJ singletrack is much more smooth.
2. There no way LJ has more climbing than Mohican. Last year the elevation gain for LJ was listed as 8K feet and according to this year's description (yes, the same one that says the gain is 13K), it's the exact same course and direction as last year. 8K is what it felt like to me and I was not having a good day.
I did both last year also (only did the 100k at Mohican, and didn't even finish Lumberjack). I would agree with Reenie. The Mohican Singletrack is a lot harder, and I felt the climbs were tougher also. Lumberjack is very smooth, and rideable. I did a lot of walking at Mohican.
Yes, 8k sounds much more reasonable. Thanks for the input!
I agree with both Reenie and Laura. Mohican singletrack=much more difficult. The Lumberjack singletrack is fun, but I think there's only one root on the whole course!
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