plant curious wrote:I would have assumed that one continuous hill would be the best way to go, except for the fact that you run into altitude issues.
My thought process is that if your goal was to run 100 miles in the least elapsed time, you'd do it continuously, except for maybe a few breaks youre forced to take for water, food, bathroom. You wouldn't do it as 50 x 2 miles, for example. So its really just logistics and altitude that makes it advantageous to break this up.
AFAIK this is a cycling thing, so hiking up is a non-starter. The idea of stashing a dozen bikes at the top of some mountain for this purpose is pretty funny though.
For climb selection, obviously you can't do 1 x 8848m ascent. You could do 2x repeats in a few places, not too many. Even Mauna Kea falls a little bit short, and you'd need to start a 3rd ascent.
Very long climbs have some problems though:
1) Not consistently steep enough. If a section of the climb isn't steep, your energy will be wasted on overcoming wind resistance, not gaining altitude.
2) Wind. More often than not, high mountains and passes are very windy, and a headwind will waste too much energy.
3) Bad road surface. High roads are often unpaved, or in rough shape if paved. This will slow you down, both uphill and down.
4) Thin air. Big climb means high altitude, which means lower power output.
5) Weather issues. Too cold at the top or too hot at the bottom.
6) Long climbs mean long descents. The first few minutes will be welcome recovery, the rest is basically wasted time. A short climb means you get frequent short rests.
7) Most people don't live near one.
I think what Gaimon did is pretty close to ideal (apart from being excruciatingly dull)