My official prediction is that I'll finish in 16:53:42.
That is an honest, accurate, non sand-bagging prediction based on a lot of information (see below) as well as my gut feelings of my current state of fitness. If anyone reading this wants to "entice" me to push myself, for instance, by offering cash or prizes for finishing faster, I'm listening! What follows is a brief description of the race, some background on me, and how I arrived at my prediction.
This Saturday (December 12, 2009), I'll be attempting my hardest/longest ultramarathon to date, the Hellgate 100K, directed by the 'infamous' Dr. David Horton. Technically a 100K (62.2 miles), one GPS track of the race has the distance at ~66 miles, with ~13,500 feet of elevation change. Below is listed some great sites for additional information. Highly recommended.
My previous longest race is the Mountain Masochist Trail Run, a ~50 mile race in this same geographic area. I finished it a little over 4 weeks ago in 10:56:25. On that day, I got a little off track and ran an extra ~2 miles so I think I could have finished in ~10:30. That race was my best ultra to date, by my assessment. I felt great at the end, better than I have in any other ultra. I feel I could have gone another 10-15 mile if needed. In total, I've finished four 50 mile races (2 of those have been the Mountain Masochist), two 40 mile races, and five 50K's, including Promise Land 50K which shares a portion of its course with Hellgate.
The two biggest "unknowns" to me is the fact that David Horton's races are never the advertised distance and the darkness + difficulty of the course is hard to objectively measure. So any predictions based simply on expected pace are likely to be wildly off. To combat this, I figured that the best way to guess my finish time was to see how long it took other people to finish Hellgate who also ran Mountain Masochist. So I trolled through the results of both races and found people who finished both races in the same year. My reasoning was that someone's level of fitness wasn't likely to change greatly in 4-5 weeks (the interval between the two races). I then calculated how much of an increase in time it took people to finish Hellgate compared to Mountain Masochist. Any errors in data are solely mine, and please keep in mind that with one exception, I have no firsthand knowledge of any of the people that resulted in this information. What I mean is, some people may have 'held back' at Masochist in anticipation of running Hellgate. Or maybe someone had a really bad day during one race and a great day at the other. Or maybe they ran with a buddy/loved one at one race and not the other. For this reason, my main focus is the average increase in time. I've also included the finishing (in under 18 hours) percentages, and what my predicted finishing times might have been in the past.
I find it really cool/scary that for a race that at its most is 16 miles longer than Mountain Masochist (i.e 32% longer), it takes most people more than 50% longer to finish! This is true for front runners and people just barely making the cutoffs. As you can see, only 1 "prediction" is over the 18 hour time limit: taking into account my actual Masochist finish time and the "Ice Year" average increase in finishing time. Most predictions are in the mid-16 to mid-17 hour range. My prediction comes mostly from the global average and what I feel I could have run at Masochist this year.
Interestingly, using where I finish in relation to the field has me finishing faster (sub 16 hours? Really?). I've found previously that I usually finish at or near the 50th percentile (i.e. if there are 100 finishers, I finish around 50th). In previous ultra's I've finished in the 31st, 40th, 49th, 46th, 63rd, 48th, 56th, and 48th percentiles. At Masochist this year, I finished in the 54th percentile of all official finishers, and like I said I felt great and feel I could have gone faster. Even estimating I finish in the 70th percentile at Hellgate this year (given I've never gone this far, etc) has me in the mid to high 16 hour range. The reason I haven't relied heavily on this data for my prediction is that it is much more variable.
So there it is. Keep in mind that this analysis is for fun and as a way for me to have some idea of how long this race may take me. I really just want to finish under 18 hours safely, anything more is a bonus. It's bad enough I'll be away from my family for a few days, I don't need to hurt myself in the process! This doesn't mean I'm not going to try my best to finish as fast as possible. With the predicted forecast, I'm gonna be wanting to get done and around a fire as soon as possible!
That is an honest, accurate, non sand-bagging prediction based on a lot of information (see below) as well as my gut feelings of my current state of fitness. If anyone reading this wants to "entice" me to push myself, for instance, by offering cash or prizes for finishing faster, I'm listening! What follows is a brief description of the race, some background on me, and how I arrived at my prediction.
This Saturday (December 12, 2009), I'll be attempting my hardest/longest ultramarathon to date, the Hellgate 100K, directed by the 'infamous' Dr. David Horton. Technically a 100K (62.2 miles), one GPS track of the race has the distance at ~66 miles, with ~13,500 feet of elevation change. Below is listed some great sites for additional information. Highly recommended.
- Official race website for 2009
- Aaron Schwartzbard's excellent overview
- Keith Knipling's excellent overview
- Great multimedia overview of the race
My previous longest race is the Mountain Masochist Trail Run, a ~50 mile race in this same geographic area. I finished it a little over 4 weeks ago in 10:56:25. On that day, I got a little off track and ran an extra ~2 miles so I think I could have finished in ~10:30. That race was my best ultra to date, by my assessment. I felt great at the end, better than I have in any other ultra. I feel I could have gone another 10-15 mile if needed. In total, I've finished four 50 mile races (2 of those have been the Mountain Masochist), two 40 mile races, and five 50K's, including Promise Land 50K which shares a portion of its course with Hellgate.
The two biggest "unknowns" to me is the fact that David Horton's races are never the advertised distance and the darkness + difficulty of the course is hard to objectively measure. So any predictions based simply on expected pace are likely to be wildly off. To combat this, I figured that the best way to guess my finish time was to see how long it took other people to finish Hellgate who also ran Mountain Masochist. So I trolled through the results of both races and found people who finished both races in the same year. My reasoning was that someone's level of fitness wasn't likely to change greatly in 4-5 weeks (the interval between the two races). I then calculated how much of an increase in time it took people to finish Hellgate compared to Mountain Masochist. Any errors in data are solely mine, and please keep in mind that with one exception, I have no firsthand knowledge of any of the people that resulted in this information. What I mean is, some people may have 'held back' at Masochist in anticipation of running Hellgate. Or maybe someone had a really bad day during one race and a great day at the other. Or maybe they ran with a buddy/loved one at one race and not the other. For this reason, my main focus is the average increase in time. I've also included the finishing (in under 18 hours) percentages, and what my predicted finishing times might have been in the past.
I find it really cool/scary that for a race that at its most is 16 miles longer than Mountain Masochist (i.e 32% longer), it takes most people more than 50% longer to finish! This is true for front runners and people just barely making the cutoffs. As you can see, only 1 "prediction" is over the 18 hour time limit: taking into account my actual Masochist finish time and the "Ice Year" average increase in finishing time. Most predictions are in the mid-16 to mid-17 hour range. My prediction comes mostly from the global average and what I feel I could have run at Masochist this year.
Interestingly, using where I finish in relation to the field has me finishing faster (sub 16 hours? Really?). I've found previously that I usually finish at or near the 50th percentile (i.e. if there are 100 finishers, I finish around 50th). In previous ultra's I've finished in the 31st, 40th, 49th, 46th, 63rd, 48th, 56th, and 48th percentiles. At Masochist this year, I finished in the 54th percentile of all official finishers, and like I said I felt great and feel I could have gone faster. Even estimating I finish in the 70th percentile at Hellgate this year (given I've never gone this far, etc) has me in the mid to high 16 hour range. The reason I haven't relied heavily on this data for my prediction is that it is much more variable.
So there it is. Keep in mind that this analysis is for fun and as a way for me to have some idea of how long this race may take me. I really just want to finish under 18 hours safely, anything more is a bonus. It's bad enough I'll be away from my family for a few days, I don't need to hurt myself in the process! This doesn't mean I'm not going to try my best to finish as fast as possible. With the predicted forecast, I'm gonna be wanting to get done and around a fire as soon as possible!
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