Total Climb

[Teknik]

Hi
I've looked at the course mapped on both www.mapmyrun.com and on Fetch. The mapmyrun one has a climb of 285 ft; the Fetch one imported from a Garmin has 275 METRES. Which one is accurate?

[Slowrunningdeer]

Sorry I will have to ask a colleague and get back to you

Race Director

[Flynn]

My Garmin logs from the 2010 race show the following:

Elevation Gain: 228 m
Elevation Loss: 227 m
MinElevation: 47 m
MaxElevation: 88 m

You wont find two GPS sources that are the same over the same route. Elevation in domestic GPS is deliberately quite course-grained. (The military version is much more accurate but then elevation matters alot when you are dropping bombs on people)

The link to my 2010 race is here if you want more stats:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/32766126

This was run with a 25lb backpack. I'd normally run it faster.

[Teknik]

Thanks Matt
I clicked through to the link, and now I'm even more confused - the elevation gain on the link is 1607 ft = 490m ! Or am I reading this wrong...

[Flynn]

You're quite correct, the Garmin site is reporting the following:

Elevation Gain: 1,607 ft
Elevation Loss: 1,631 ft
MinElevation: 95 ft
MaxElevation: 338 ft

But you only get these figures if you're not logged into their website. If I log in I get the following stats as my user preference is for metric measurements:

Elevation Gain: 490 m
Elevation Loss: 497 m
MinElevation: 29 m
MaxElevation: 103 m

I genuinely have no idea where the figures I first got from the Garmin website have gone.

Honestly though, it's not a hilly course. It undulates a bit but really it's pretty flat. If you compare the course profile to a race like the Beachy Head Marathon then you'd come to the conclusion that our marathon is pretty much flat.

[Teknik]

Thanks Matt. Maybe it was the year you ran it twice...LOL. I'm sticking with the 250m to 275m that appears to be the mode figure from the Fetch uploads...and that's not much worse than Brighton. It's my third attempt at sub4 at Halstead and my fear of the hills gets a bit lower each time...

[Flynn]

These weird differences in GPS (and the terrible battery life) are the reason I don't bother with GPS watches any more.

Good luck with the end of your preparation for the race.