On December 5th, 2009 the Canadian racing season (and North American too) started with an event hosted at a ski resort near Golden, BC. One of the disciplines was a vertical race, a hill climb, that was a pure all out effort without disruptions of transitions and leg burns from crazy downhills. Besides the fastest Canadians, two US speedsters took the starting line too.
» To see a complete report from the Golden race go here – Tiki Torch Dash 2009.
With a help from Ian Gale, one of the organizers and competitors, I was able to gather correct altitude data for the Golden vertical race course and figure out the vertical gain (amount of ascent) of the ascent.
And since we know the winning times as well calculating the vertical speeds of performances is easy.
With all that info available, I was amused to establish some sort of a benchmark for Canadian and US ski mountaineering athletes, so we could compare ourselves to the fastest in the World, the Europeans.
For this comparison, I decided to choose a vertical race that was part of the 2008 World Ski Mountaineering Championships in Switzerland. The reasons are simple – vertical gain and winning times are easily available and accurate. And the race, in mens category, was won by a long time best in the business skimo racer, Florent Perrier, who had a form of his life for the whole week of the Championships. World fastest women are represented by Roberta Pedranzini.
Here is a good video from the 2008 Worlds vertical race:
Raw facts about the two races
Firstly I am going to present you with raw facts about the race courses, winning times and the vertical speeds achieved by some athletes. Then I will discuss how do I think the Canadian and US athletes compare to Europeans right now and where they could possibly be in the future.
Golden vertical race (Dec 5th, 2009)
Altitude gain: 338m
Altitude factor: almost non-existent as the race finished at 1600m
Fastest times and average vertical speeds (AVS):
- Reiner Thoni (CAN) – 17:07 (17min 7sec) = > AVS of 19.75 m/m (1185 m/h)
- Brandon French (USA) – 17:14 => AVS of 19.61 m/m (1176.6 m/h)
- Melanie Bernier (CAN) – 18:13 => AVS of 18.55 m/m (1113 m/h)
» Click here for Golden Tiki Torch Dash 2009 results.
2008 Worlds vertical race (Feb 28th, 2008)
Altitude gain: 870m
Altitude factor: not significant as the race finished below or around 2000m
Fastest times and average vertical speeds (AVS):
- Florent Perrier (France) – 35:05 = > AVS of 24.80 m/m (1488 m/h)
- Roberta Pedranzini (Italy) – 43:39 => AVS of 19.93 m/m (1195.8 m/h)
» Click here for 2008 Worlds vertical results.
Vertical speed units glossary:
m/m = gained vertical meters per minute
m/h = gained vertical meters per hour
Is this comparing apples with apples?
There is an obvious fact, some might argue, that this comparison cannot be accurate – the duration of the races or more precisely the difference in vertical gains are quite big, 338m versus 870m.
And at the first glance it totally makes sense to think that, however, I believe I can show you how this is a fairly fair comparison, even though, I agree that an absolute conclusions can be drawn only from the very same race, done by the same athletes, on the very same day.
Factors to consider in this comparison
Elevation gains – point for European athletes
The altitude difference is clearly on the side of the European race and the athletes that raced on that course – Perrier and Pedranzini. The difference is 532m or slightly more than 2.5 times more vertical gain in the European race than in Golden.
Course profile – point for North American athletes
Even though I could not find the course profile of the 2008 Worlds vertical race again I believe it was, on average, a bit steeper than the Golden race course. And those that raced the Golden vertical course will agree that it was quite “flat”.
Equipment – point for NA athletes
Reiner, Brandon, Melanie and the rest of us raced the Golden vertical with heavier gear than Florent or Roberta used in their performances. The differences would be between 300gm per foot all the way to couple of kilos. By my estimation, Reiner’s equipment was about 600-700gm per foot heavier than Florent’s, if not more. And Melanie had maybe about 200-300gm more to carry per foot than Roberta.
» To get an idea of how equipment weight adds to your time and decreases your vertical speed take a look at an article about vertical climbing speed in ski mountaineering.
Time of the season – point for NA athletes
By no means was anyone as ready for the Golden race as they will be in March. Therefore, we can expect everyone to go faster later in the season, thus getting a better comparison against Florent and Roberta as they were on top of their game when they won the World titles at the end of February.
Timing of the event and conditions – point for NA athletes
The vertical race in Golden was a night race with headlamps which makes it harder to judge your effort accurately. Also, the vert race started very late, at 9.15pm, and was preceded by a relay race that already took some strength from the athletes.
And on top of all that it was close to -20 Celsius out there and it was difficult to tell whether your inside is burning because of the cold air or you are really going your fastest. Everyone coughed like we were at an emergency room for tuberculosis 🙂
How do we compare, in pure speed, against the World’s best?
If I just simply took Reiner’s average vertical speed achieved in Golden (19.75 m/m) and compared it against the average speeds achieved at the 2008 Worlds vertical race then he would have placed 58th out of the 90 competitors because:
- Time of the 57th placed athlete was 44:00 which means AVS of 19.77 m/m (1186.2 m/h)
- And time for 58th place was 44:07 which means AVS of 19.72 m/m (1183.2 m/h)
Brandon would have arrived just few spots behind Reiner to take 61st place.
According to the same formula, Melanie (18.55 m/m) would have place an impressive 10th out of 46 competitors in the women’s category because:
- The 9th woman finished in 46:27 which means VS of 18.73 m/m (1123.8 m/h)
- And the 10th finisher clocked 47:16 which means VS of 19.41 m/m (1104.6 m/h)
The difference in speed between us and the fastest are obvious and quite big – about 20% for men and 8% for women. However, there are those above mentioned factors to consider before we can paint a clearer picture.
Future? And how do we compare after the different factors are mixed in?
Based on my training program (and commitment) and based on talking to other Canadian and US athletes it appears that no one did any significant speed or interval work before the Golden race. All of us were pretty much coming out from our base building period with even only few days on skis, which I think is a good indicator of things to come.
So why is this a good sign if we are still minutes behind the best? Well, because with a good program, I believe, come March each of us will be able to hold on to our speed from the Golden race for a much longer time period…of course unless it’s -20 again 🙂
This factors in the benefits of all the training to come after the base building period as well as hoping that the course at the 2010 World Championships will be more suitable for higher average vertical speeds than the Golden one.
And I am not even going to mention that many of us are still yet to drop couple of hundred grams per foot before we line up on a start line in Andorra on March 2nd, 2010.
There is not doubt in my mind that Europeans will be faster than two years ago, however, I know their equipment is getting lighter only by around 50-100gm per foot, whereas ours is getting lighter by almost few pounds.
But by no means I am naive about our future performances, and by no means we are going to win medals soon. However, we are getting a step closer on a stair case that is about 5-10 years tall before we can even think about prestigious podiums (unless of course someone very talented comes along or recruits from another sport).
So where do we stand right now?
Not even 2-3 years ago I would imagined that we would be were we are right now, and I don’t mean speed wise as there is obviously a lot to improve.
However, speed is only a side effect of a bigger effort. Everything starts with a passion, then commitment, then team and then hopefully we stick to that commitment long enough that we can produce some results.
I can’t speak on behalf of the US skimo racers but I certainly like what I see happening in Canada – lots of committed people for various aspects of the sport are pulling on the same side of the rope. We have passion, commitment and a great team, so now it’s all about sticking to it long enough 😉
joal says
Any way you talk about it 24.8 m/min is fast! Wow.
Thanks for the info Stano-I enjoy reading your mad science. Did you think about trying to account for elevation speed decrease based on lenght of climb? E.g., correlate 5 km to 10 km run paces (or something similar) in other sports and then adjust the rates accordingly? Just something else you can look into if you get bored. I bet you can find a fairly strong correlation between sports, time, distance and speed (i.e. work).
Stano says
Jeff, sorry for later approval but the thing stopped notifying me when new comments were made.
And yeah, I did go skiing in the afternoon as there was work to do in the AM hours. Did you go?
Jeff C says
Did anybody go skiing?
Stano says
Racing with heart rate monitor? Great question James…and a topic for another post 🙂
In short, here is what I do.
Racing with a HRM distracts me too and I believe it keeps me from performing my best as I get overwhelmed by the high HR values. But there is a great value to do it from time to time, so here are my basic rules:
1.
I wear it and record the race data but don’t look at the monitor at all or only like 5 times during the whole race. Essentially, I am mentaly ignoring the thing but I am still collecting good data to look at later.
2.
I race with a HRM only at training races, the ‘B list’ ones. For example, in the summer I would race with it or at Sunshine event last season I had it as I didn’t consider the event an ‘A list’ event. However, once I saw a potential for a good result I dropped the strap from my chest and went for it 🙂
3.
I believe a HRM can be greatly used for even a goal event if it’s very long, like the old Whistler course, cause it’s good to conserve energy. Or like PDG, or at Pierra Menta as it’s important to just give enough but not too much.
So what to do with your biggest races?
For those, I prefer to follow my instincts and feelings, no HRM on my chest. In a 2h race there is not much you can conserve anyways, so you should rather observe what is going on than to watch your HRM.
James says
Wanted to get your thoughts Stan (and others) about racing with a heart rate monitor. I tried it once last season and it proved to be such a distraction to me that I abandoned the practice flat out. I just feel that training is training and racing is racing and HR zones much of the time seem to go out the window especially when I want to stay with a pack or attack. That said, I’m wondering if I’m missing out on a valuable tool and whether anyone had any wisdom regarding how a HRM might me used wisely during a race.
Stano says
Great to see everyone discussing.
Mel, thanks for providing some validation on my theories that the Euro course was steeper overall therefore it was easier to keep a higher vertical speed than on a much flatter Golden course.
As for the slope angles and vertical speeds I tried to address this in an article from few months ago here:
http://www.skintrack.com/skimo-racing/vertical-speed-skimo-uphill-running-slope-angle/
I arrive at the same conclusions as Mel, through my experience, that there is a fine balance between a suitable slope angle and the fastest sustainable vert speed. And I believe, this varies for each athlete, not too much but it does.
Mel says
Great to see some reactions!
As an athlete who was in both event, I’d like to bring a different perspective to the subject. First of, the vertical race at the World Championships was quite a bit steeper then the Golden race. It had some low angle terrain specially by the end of the course but the first part was a leg burner! So the 2 vertical courses were quite different on that aspect.
In parallel to this, I would also like to open the discussion to an other subject which you talked about in an other article (speed versus elevation gain). I have done some experimentation on the elevation gain when going up at lower angle (which means higher speed) and compare to elevations gain when going a steeper route (lesser speed) and every time, there is a few minutes in favor of the lower angle route even if I need to cover more ground to get to the same point. This means that the terrain has a lot to do with the results. In the case of the Worlds Race, It came down to how quickly you could recover from the steep pitch before sprinting along the lower angle slope…!
Also the length of the race course has lots to do with it. Personally, I don’t know if it’s the same for you guys but would’ve not been able to carry the same speed for an other 500 plus meter… maybe in march but not in december! I was reading an article about how much your energy/efficiency decrease with time as you perform during an endurance event. The nature of a vertical race would be comparable to a sprint versus a marathon for a long rando race. The vertical requires you to push to VO2 max and hold it for as long as possible without crashing. If you hold your max HR for more the 10 to 15 minutes, you can see a steep decrease in the athlete’s performance and a longer time to recover from the great effort.
My point and in conclusion to the different thoughts above is that if the terrain would’ve been steeper in the golden race, we may have not seen any significant decrease in the m/m right away since the course was short but if it would’ve been the same length as the World Champ, I think it would’ve made a greater difference.
I appreciate you putting both event side by side Stano as it is a reminder that we, Canadian. are new to a sport that has been popular for a long time in Europe. Just the fact that the latest Golden Rando race is the only data we have to compare World race with speaks for itself. I think we have come a long way with still lots to accomplish and with a team of 12 great athletes going to the Worlds this season, compare to a team of 6 in 2008, it shows how serious our country is becoming and how we are taking the shot cuts to place within the Worlds ranking.
Wether we are going to Europe to have fun and enjoy the learning opportunity or serious and want to put the hammer down, we will see and appreciate how much respect there is for Rando Racing over there and it would probably give us all an other vision of the sport. It’s like Hockey for Canadians for those guys. You have to live it and make the most of it! I am sure we will have a great presence in Europe!
Happy training!
M
Ian G says
🙂
Ian G says
Holy 🙂 shit :), simmer 🙂 down 🙂 Minifie 🙂 …. I’m not specifically talking about you, I’m speaking more to a general attitude. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent thinking about how I’ll stack up in Andorra… a borderline obsessive amount. But ultimatly I’ve decided that it’s more important to me to focus on how I’ll do here, on the N.A. circuit(where I have a chance) and take worlds as a learning opportunity. I don’t have the same(or any) background in competitive sport as you, because of that, I do have a very strong- as long as I have fun attitude…..
I think the article addresses something we’re all wondering- how do we compare? But that’s something we’ll have to wait until March to find out. 🙂 Sure has got us talking though……
Stano says
No problem James. As an author I am obviously “attached” to the article, so I got a bit defensive.
James says
Sorry Stan!!! Not trying to be an ass here. Obviously, I respect all of your opinions and read with vigor! Skintrack is the only RSS feed on my Google page! I will clarify, as a racer, I didn’t find this comparison useful or true to it’s title because I really don’t think it says anything about how we compare to the world’s fastest. However, you are right to put as much info out there as possible for all interested parties to read. You do a good job my friend. I look forward to “pouncing” all over your commentary in the future 🙂 Keep up the good work.
Stano says
James, this website isn’t intended only for hard-core skimo racers, in fact, it’s purpose is only about 50% for that.
So perhaps one of the things the article shows is that there is one very unique variable in our sport – vertical speed – which can be used for comparisons. Then also, for “outsiders” (beginners in bc skiing or skimo racing or general outdoor dudes) it gives an honest picture of were we are and perhaps also were we want to go.
Also, the Golden vertical was pretty much the first serious vertical in Canada, therefore, I could finally use something to compare, as I think comparing a usual 2h skimo race can’t be done.
Still think there is nothing useful in it? If yes, then I will try better in the future…which I will anyways 😉
James says
Ian: Not sure how you interpret my “sole focus” as getting on the podium. And no one is trying to “belittle” the Canadian racing scene. Grass Roots is where it starts and you have been no slouch in spearheading that. However, I’ve been involved in competitive sport my entire life and have often been frustrated by the Canadian “as long as your having fun” school of thought. Of course this is FUN there is no way anyone would put themselves through one of these races if they weren’t having fun. However, we are talking about making the jump to an elite level of sport here. A very professional level. And when that happens, things change. You’re right, you need grassroots, you need a good community core, it has to start somewhere. But if you want to produce elite National level athletes you need to go beyond that and, unfortunately, some of the aspects of elite sport aren’t that fun at all. And yes, I do realize this is waaaay off topic. That’s how I roll damn it! Reiner: just curious as to what you find “very useful” is Stano’s article. Peace…..kinda 😉
Stano says
Ian, just do the same as you would in an email or on a cell phone and it will translate into these 🙂
And thanks for kudos as I thought I would be set on fire with passion by my own relay team-mate 🙂
Ian G says
I have to figure out how to use these smiley faces you guys love….
Ian G says
Hey Stano…. I like the article, I do think that it’s apples and oranges but you admit that too. I appreciate trying to quantify our efforts and see where we stack up. It’s valid, and having spent time with you I know that you’re very analitical and enjoy the comparisons and the debate. James is right, chances of a north american on the podium is pretty slim, but I think that focusing soley on that is belittling the race circuit we have here- a burgeoning, mostly grass roots, FUN series, where you don’t really know who’s going to win for sure….
I think you’re right, we’re improving by leaps and bounds where the euros are improving only by small percentages. It’s just a matter of time…..
Reiner says
I really enjoyed your comparsions Stano I thought they were very usefull. Personally I thought the gap was bigger. Favored or not its great to have an understanding on what the world class pace is.
“Everything starts with a passion” You didnt expect James response, this shows that we might be underestimating the passion/drive of some of our racers! I dont think anybody expected to see jungle gym with a medal on this neck! 😉
Stano says
Haha, that is so funny 🙂 I never expected anyone to have such a reaction to this article.
James, aren’t you interested to have a comparison now and after the Worlds? I don’t think this is crazy at all and that this is not useful until after March. Also, I am also not aware that I am suggesting to go to compete in Europe with our tails between our legs.
I wasn’t trying to scare anyone at all. I simply put numbers together from one of the most contest vertical races ever done and from a very recent assessment of our speed.
And I am aware very well of the results achieved by Brandon French or Cary Smith in the past and they are very respectable. However, here I was comparing where we are right now, as in December 2009, that’s why I wasn’t going back two seasons ago.
So please no one get scared as I am just calculating some pure numbers (which are not in our favor at this moment) and presenting some facts (which are very much in our favor) 🙂
James says
Wow Stano, you really are comparing apples to, well, I don’t know what here. It’s funny in your assessment how you preface with all the reasons why this is a really bad comparison and then go ahead and make it anyway. It’s no secret that Euro racers are much more advanced than NA racers. That is something all of us have accepted and, like you say, we are striving to close this gap. There are a few notable results that you omitted here such as Carey Smith 39th and Brandon French 41st in 2008. This is fairly impressive considering the field and the fact that this was NA racer’s first major foray into the event. Also, the American teams fared quite well in the Pierra Menta last year both men and women. As an athlete preparing to compete for Canada in Andorra this season I am under no illusion. I understand that I have much athletic and technical developing to do. However, I’m in no way going into this with a defeatist attitude. I will race my ass off in March as will all of the Canadian racers and we will see where the chips fall. Then, we will show up again in Italy next year and do the same. Along the way, we will grow the sport here and hopefully we will be in the mix sooner rather than later. Until then, I think it does no good to make these crazy comparisons. Wait until March to make your comparisons. Then they will at least be useful. As for all the current and budding NA racers, don’t let this comparison scare you off. We’re getting the gear, we’re learning how to train, and we’re getting faster. I encourage all comers to the North American race scene. Sorry, Stan, you are definitely a cornerstone of Canadian Skimo racing and I respect your efforts, abilities, and knowledge but this one got to me 🙂