Saturday, May 10, 2008

The Ulster Way versus the Transalp Challenge

In July 2006, we completed the Transalp Challenge, hailed as the world's toughest mountainbike race, and we trained our socks off for it for 6 months, albeit we did not really know what we were at. A couple of days ago, we completed the new Ulster Way, devoid of adequate training, having only been out on only one 4+ hour ride in 2008, round Lough Neagh the week before we departed.

We thought it would be interesting to do a comparison of the two challenges, in terms of times, distances, and vertical climbing, just to see how it all stacks up. The results are interesting (if you find this sort of guff fascinating, that is!)

Basically, it's no wonder the Ulster Way nearly killed us!

Transalp ChallengeThe New Ulster Way
Total distance (km)600937
Total climbing (m)22,00015,744
Number of days86
Total time we took (hrs)5684
Average climbing / day (m)2,7502,624
Average distance / day (km)75156
Average stage time / day (hrs)714

2 comments:

TeamPurple said...

Ah but you haven't factored in the heat and the ice cream. Which would you rather do again??????

Rick McKee said...

but you don't get mauds or mullins in the alps!