What measurement would you use instead to represent the amount of climbing involved in a route?
The main issue I have with this "total climb" measurement is that it appears to depend on the "sampling frequency" - the closer together the points you sample the altitude of, the more rough the surface appears, and thus the more ups (and downs) to contribute to the measurement. It adds up, so the measurement isn't very meaningful without mentioning the sampling frequency used. Maximum altitude difference might be a bit better.
Yes. You try doing 60,000 step-ups and report back how easy that was.
I'm not saying it's easy, but this...
/\/\/\/\/\/\
...would be easier than this...
/\ /\ /\
/ \/ \/ \
...and easier than this
/\ /\
/ \ / \
/ \/ \
or even this
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
despite them all having the same "total climb". To take this to the extreme, consider a surface that varies up and down by 1 inch every inch. Run 60,000 feet on this surface, and you'll have achieved "60,000 feet of total climb."
The highest resolution is 1 meter (but they don't have that data for the entire US).
The crappiness of GPS based total elevation gain is pretty well understood, so they probably wouldn't use that. So as long as they used data (or a topo map) instead of GPS, you can assume that the sampling frequency was not ridiculous (and it probably only includes gain that is apparent over something like 10 or 30 feet).
I am -very much- not an expert but I suspect the difficulty profile is more like a hump than an upward slope - going downhill works different muscles than uphill and frequent* switching between the two seems like it would put more stress on you than uphill[hours]+downhill[hours] due to having two sets of muscles in use, less time for recovery, less time for warming up, etc.
(This is where we need a real physio / doctor / anatomist!)
Its an old riddle: what is the length of the coastline of Britain? Measure it by miles, you get one number. Measure by inches, another number. Measure the line that wriggles around every grain of sand at the waterline on every beach, you get 10X the number.
I think races are counting from inflection point to inflection point or something. Still, its arbitrary.
From a strictly theoretical point of view, yes, but in practice this isn't a concern. No-one measures the individual pebbles on the trail. Generally, the "feet of climbing" is measured vertically from the valley bottom to mountain top.
Except the Earth isn't actually shaped like this. Even less so, paths intended for running (or cycling). The numbers are dominated by real altitude gain, and anything missed or contributed by uneven road surface is minor by comparison.
The main issue I have with this "total climb" measurement is that it appears to depend on the "sampling frequency" - the closer together the points you sample the altitude of, the more rough the surface appears, and thus the more ups (and downs) to contribute to the measurement. It adds up, so the measurement isn't very meaningful without mentioning the sampling frequency used. Maximum altitude difference might be a bit better.
Yes. You try doing 60,000 step-ups and report back how easy that was.
I'm not saying it's easy, but this...
...would be easier than this... ...and easier than this or even this despite them all having the same "total climb". To take this to the extreme, consider a surface that varies up and down by 1 inch every inch. Run 60,000 feet on this surface, and you'll have achieved "60,000 feet of total climb."