Capitol Forest 50 mile race

Jim LeMonds sent out an email about the 50 mile race at Capitol Forest (and a 100 miler) that is coming up in August. The race is run on 42 miles of single track with an 8 mile stretch of double track.

I decided to plot out the race, to try and get a perspective on the climbing and descending. To that end I have done a full race map and profile plot, and then I broke the race route up into 5 sections for which I have plotted each profile.

The promoters are claiming a mere 5,800 feet of climbing.

I took their GPX data and ran it through a script that added the elevation gain when ever the new elevation was higher than the old elevation. My calculation was closer to 10,000 feet of climbing.

I have uploaded my Excel workbook to a Google Docs Spreadsheet so you can view all the details of the elevation changes in the race route.

Here is the VBA script that I used to calculate the total footage gain.

Sub totalElevation()
    Dim objSheet As Worksheet
    Dim intRow As Integer
    Dim dblTotalElevation As Double
    Dim dblCurrentElevation As Double
    Dim dblLastElevation As Double
    Dim dblElevationGain As Double


    intRow = 2


    Set objSheet = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1")
    With objSheet
        dblLastElevation = .Cells(intRow, 3)
    Do Until IsEmpty(.Cells(intRow, 3))
            dblCurrentElevation = .Cells(intRow, 3)
            If dblCurrentElevation > dblLastElevation Then
                dblElevationGain = dblCurrentElevation - dblLastElevation
                dblTotalElevation = dblTotalElevation + dblElevationGain
                dblLastElevation = dblCurrentElevation
                .Cells(intRow, 4) = dblTotalElevation
            Else
                dblLastElevation = dblCurrentElevation
                .Cells(intRow, 4).ClearContents
            End If
            intRow = intRow + 1
        Loop
    End With
    Set objSheet = Nothing
    Debug.Print dblTotalElevation
End Sub

The full map and profile:

The map and profile broken into 5 sections: