croagh patrick- how many miles?

BattyJoe wrote: »

Hi

My friend and I are planning on doing c Patrick soon and going doing some training. Any idea how many miles it is up and down the mountain ? Or how many miles is it equivalent to walking .... taking the toughness into account ?

Ok this is actually a good opportunity for a basic mountaincraft lesson.

You need to take some things into account

1. The distance
2. The height climbed
3. (Optionally) the height descended.

You will be starting from Murrisk
https://maps.google.ie/maps?q=murrisk+westport&hl=en&ll=53.783919,-9.62368&spn=0.067243,0.181103&geocode=+&hq=murrisk&hnear=Westport,+County+Mayo&t=h&z=13&iwloc=D

You can see the track up the mountain in satellite view and Google Maps has a distance measurement tool that you can switch on via the Maps Labs link at the bottom right.

Croagh Patrick is 764 metres high.

You can use a thing called Naismiths rule.

Time for the ascent
So you calculate the distance and the time taken to travel that distance at walking speed. For your purposes assume 4kmh if you are fit (assume 5kmh if very fit, if you are returning to excercise 3kmh). Record that time.

Now divide the height of Croagh Patrick by 10. Add this number to the time for the flat distance. (You add a minute to your "flat" time for every 10m climbed).

This gives you the total estimated time for the ascent.

Time for the descent
The time for the descent will be the time to walk the equivalent distance on the flat. There are conflicting view on when to add time for the "descending".

In this case, if it were me, I would add 1 minute for every 30 metres descended from the top to half way down - so over a descent of 380m. (The cone at the top requires caution when descending the footing can be slippy)

This gives you the total estimated time for the descent.

Training target

Add all your times up and convert to hours. Multiply this by 4kmh to get the equivalent for doing the whole thing on the flat. This is your training target. (See above re wether to use 3kmh or 5kmh)

Alun wrote: »

Whilst I use Naismith's, or a slightly tweaked version that gives results a bit closer to my own capabilities, for route card generation, when I look at the average speed on my GPS, and after analysing over 500 GPS tracks of mine acquired over the last 10 years or so, it's very rarely significantly different to 3km/h overall. It's actually quite uncannily accurate

I should also have added in - "add 10 mins every hour for rest stops"

Few of us actually go out and walk non-stop.

BarryD wrote: »

I'd agree, 3 kph is a good figure to use to estimate for an average speed over the course of a day.

Reminds me of driving - when I started driving in the 1980s, I could pretty reliably estimate an average speed of 40 mph to get most places in the country (apart from city driving!). Roll on a few years, new roads and town bypasses etc. and it's not a whole lot different, unless you're on motorway all or most of the way. Less towns to go through but more traffic on the road etc.

Yes the last "long walk" I did this year was the Joyce Country Challenge which took 9 hours. If the "official" distance is correct thats 3.3kmh.

It would interesting to see if there is a distance below which that generalisation ceases to apply.