There are many different ways to track training load. As the years progress and technology improves, there are more and more methods to quantify this. Most people look at overall mileage or time. I’m a mileage guy. Whether that’s 8 miles, 20, or my typical mid-week 7.5 miler, that’s how I think of my runs. Heading out for 45 minutes would just seem wrong. Out-and-back to point A or a little further to the next road? Yeah, definitely.
The exception to this is elevation gain. I’ve been tracking it in my training log since I started running, however it wasn’t until the lead up to Eastern States in 2021 that I started doing extra workouts with the intention of getting more vert. That race went so well I copied the workouts last year with similar results. This year I decided to take things to a new level. Here’s a chart of my monthly elevation gain totals to put things into perspective.
Now I am an avowed round numbers guy. Chasing 10K (100×100), 20 mile long runs. I love a round easy number so it was a little jarring for me to highlight some of those 29k months. I was initially just going to count the 30k months, but that doesn’t have quite the same cachet as Mt. Everest. So in the interest of being a little more entertaining for my three loyal readers, you get see that I’ve done an Everest of elevation gain in eight different months.
Most of these months have been due to 100 mile races with 20k elevation (Cloudsplitter, MMT, ES100, and Grindstone). Only the past two Julys and this past month have been done in training. About two-thirds of the way through June, I started to feel the accumulated climbing. Especially after two workouts on consecutive days with 2,400ft (8 miles) followed by 5,000ft (20 miles). Legs feeling a bit heavy. Paces a little slower than normal. You know. Well, I decided to keep pushing through and I think I’ve come out the other side stronger for it. The true test is coming up in 10 days though.