100 Miles of Fun!

One of the funnest things about my job is getting spoon fed some of the coolest activities.  Being a runner I'm always interested in the events in which others partake . . . events that would never register on my radar out of fear or time constraints or laziness. 

Starting at 5:00 AM on 23 June 2007, hundreds of runners set out on one of the oldest and most challenging ultra marathons, the Western States 100.  One of our courageous members graciously said "sure, go ahead and do an MBlog post using my activity!"  Squirrel traversed the 100 mile endurance test in 26:34:33.  Check out the remote trail, and Squirrel's activity, below:

There are about 365 days until the 2008 event . . . start your training!

kk

Comments

[Peter Lubbers]

Couple of questions:
How accurate are these details?
They said it was only 100.2 miles with about 18,000' elevation gain and loss, but the data I looked at is quite different.
(103 miles, 31,000' elevation?)

Also, there is no way the battery of the 205/305 would last that long. Did you use multiple Forerunners?

Thanks,
Pete

[Kathryn Krieger]

Hi Pete,

The endurance runner did use multiple devices. So that answers the question of battery life.

The GPS signal was just Fair. This will affect metrics such as distance and elevation. The distance is pretty close within accuracy expectations, even with the Poor - Fair satellite lock. The elevation is not accurate on this activity. Below are articles on Calculations and MB Gravity. The Gravity MBlog post explains the limitations, so that will help explain what may be happening. Western States is such a great event that I wanted to share Squirrel's trail!

http://wiki.motionbased.com/mb/Calculations

http://blog.motionbased.com/2005/05/mb_gravity_elev.html

Kathryn

[Peter Lubbers]

Thanks for the explanations

[Andy]

I noticed you said that the runner used multiple GPS devices, I have the forerunner 305 as well and I am training for the WS100. Do you know how he did that with his 305 and the battery life? Or if he used multiple how did he get all the info into one map?

Thanks for your help.
Andy

[Reiner Stucky]

I was kindly loaned 2 extra Garmin 305's Have one of my own , One from the Garmin Agents in South Africa and one from a friend. I ran a off road 100 mile in South Africa the Addo Elephant 100 miler. The data was combined from the 3 watches and it is on the following link http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/email/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=101310&unitSystemPkValue=1&episodePk.pkValue=2605113&backgroundDatasourcePk.pkValue=1
You can put me on here to Greetings Reiner Stucky +27827351104