One Million Feet
Normalizing vert
I feel a little dumb writing this because I don’t want this to come across as like “look at me, I did something,” especially because in the weird ultrarunning/Wasatch bubble that I occupy, hitting a million feet of vert doesn’t even feel like something that unique or impressive. But I ascended over 1,000,000 feet of vertical gain this year. For me, that’s a lot. It was a quiet goal that I made this time last year. It wasn’t about comparing myself to anyone else, the purpose of the goal was to establish habits that would normalize gaining more vert than I ever had previously in a calendar year. I made small, everyday decisions to pick hillier routes, to hike more, sometimes sacrificing scenery for efficiency, and those decisions added up to 1,008,944 feet (so far. Still a couple days left).
I enjoy the sort of training that leads to accumulating vert. It’s the sort of thing I can imagine myself prioritizing even more in the next few years. Beyond just stacking up numbers, what a vertically-focused year really means is putting yourself in the mountains more often. Slowing down, using poles, taking in the alpine while you ascend steep grades.
While that sort of activity took a backseat during late spring and early summer as I prepared for Western States, the year was bookended with quite a bit of it. TGC, World Champs, and GPT100 training all involved significant time on verty terrain, where I measured volume in hours and thousands of feet. Here are some kinda fun stats:
Only 5/52 weeks this year had less than 10,000ft of gain, generally because I was either recovering from a race or an injury.
Along with that, my lowest week was 915 feet, the week after hitting my knee during World Champs.
On the other hand, only 7/25 weeks had over 30,000ft of gain, meaning that the vast majority of weeks were just decent honest work without anything special.
My two highest vert weeks each included summits of Mont Blanc (which happened on a Sunday and Monday and therefore counted across two different weeks).
My Monday summit of Mont Blanc, again with friend and photographer shitinthewoods. Consistently knocking out 20k-ish weeks is all it takes, and if the purpose of my goal was to normalize vertical gain, mission accomplished because at this point that sounds pretty doable.
Almost all of that vertical gain was outdoors, on foot, with descent. Not all. About 30k was biking or skiing, and about 10k was on a treadmill without the descending. My goal was just about the vertical gain so I’m good with how that worked out.
While this goal was not front of mind most of the year, after GPT100 it took center stage. I often struggle with motivation to train after the final race of the year. Weather gets worse and my mind and body are ready for an off season. And I’m a believer in the off season, it’s important and I took one. But then I relied on this goal to motivate me to get back on the horse and lap Mahogany Mountain on days when I otherwise would have done a little neighborhood jog. Friends came out and joined me. I finished off my final climb to get to a million feet by carrying Marshall up the St. George cinder cone at the end of my run that day.
Going forward, I fully expect to hit a million feet again next year. Without a big early-season ultra on the calendar, I’d like to have a much higher percentage of my vertical gain come from skiing, assuming winter really hits the Wasatch eventually. I’m not going to make a specific goal around vert or mileage or any training stat for 2026, but I do want to continue with these vertical habits I’ve created. They’ll serve me well for my bigger objectives.
