Climbing equivalent of running a marathon?

Matthew Bertolatus wrote:

I know this horse has been beaten, buried, dug up, beaten some more, and reburied, but I do not care:  LOL man you know other people can see this right?  If you don't really know what you're talking about it's ok not to chime in. 

Well it's raining again so I'm back on the forums.

169 Americans qualified for the 2024 trials by running under 2:18 so the idea of at least a thousand worldwide running 2:21 isn't that far fetched...

the idea of that being average is pretty silly... 

Alan Rubinwrote:

What about mountaineering---moving continuously up a steep snow/ ice slope, especially at altitude ( Rainer, Denali), might be relatively equivalent.

I haven't gotten through all these comments yet (as context is important), but I have ran a marathon (3:31:37), and climbed Rainier via the Kautz Route (over the span of 4 days--were aiming for 3, but poor conditions and the desire to enjoy the long trip added a day), and I have been asked this questions a few times now. "What was harder? Rainier or the marathon?".

I usually can't answer without a nuanced and pedantic answer.

If I had a gun to my head--climbing Rainier was significantly easier than the marathon.

Love this question. For one, I've always said that there's a "running" equivalent to each type of climbing. Sprint - Bouldering, Jog/treadmill - TR/Lead in the gym, Outdoor running - TR/Lead Outside, Trail Running - Trad, Backpacking - Big Wall, Ultra - Big Wall IAD. 

But I think of the idea of a "Marathon" is just "an attainable fitness goal to work towards". Doing it in the 5hr timeframe means mostly just finishing one. I think the equivalent in climbing is like many people have said - a sizeable moderate multipitch. For me, a similar elation / goal was doing RA or Snake Dike or Matthes or Conness for the first time. It took preparation, and was an easily identifiable bar that non-climbers and climbers alike could see as requiring effort and training more than beginner. From my novice perspective, someday doing Astroman or the Rostrum is similarly unattainable as getting a Boston Qualifying time, and equally notable.

I think trying to equate raw "physical difficulty" is very, very hard. I've often had an easier-to-compare ratio between cycling and running miles, but even that has varied anywhere from 3:1 to 5:1 depending on which I'm focusing on any given year. Trying to equate Trad grades to Sport grades to indoor gym grades to indoor or outdoor boulder grades is very dependent on the skills you have in each. For example, I'd say a 5.8 Trad climb is ~ 5.10b sport climb which is ~ 5.11b gym climb, or a v4 gym boulder but all of that is very much up to debate. All that to say, trying to get any of those grades to compare to an endurance goal like cycling a century or running a marathon is gonna be tough.

I’ve run a few marathons. Each one a little faster than the one before. My first one was 5 hours, my most recent was like 3:45. I wasn’t really a stronger runner each time, I had just learned more about marathoning, and carried a little more muscle memory.

I’m a moderate climber, not a crusher, and I’ve never trained to climb at higher grades.

My comparison would be that running a marathon, to me, feels like a 6-8 pitch trad route near my limits, with a good hike in and out. Maybe like Snaz in the Tetons, or Wasteland at Cochise. Or fill in the blank at Red Rocks or RMNP. A big long day climb that you’ll definitely feel the next day, but isn’t going to leave you destroyed for a week. It’s not a grade VI big wall or a multi-day alpine route.

Just my humble opinion.

the snaz was real blue collar climbing for me. wasted me pretty good but not quite as much as I suspect a marathon would.  granted you get rests while belaying but you don't get killed or maimed for making a mistake in a marathon.  Buck mtn on the other hand I was completely toasted.. 

NateB wrote:

I would say a 5 hour marathon as a cardio athlete and an ability to send a sport 12- in a few sessions as a climber would be a good baseline for calling someone "reasonably fit" - roughly the 80th % as I posted above

You don't really think 80% of climbers (20th percentile) are sending 5.12, right?

According to this MP data scraping project, the 20% percentile for sport climbing is under 5.10 (they say 5.8).  Less than 5% of climbers (95th percentile) are climbing 5.12, per this dataset.

https://www.shaunwmccarthy.com/data-visualizations/2021/12/22/the-top-10-of-climbers-mountain-project-data

Anecdotally, that is much more in line with what we all see at crags.  If 80% of climbers were climbing 5.12, the hard routes would be a lot busier than they are.

There are too many issues with that study - starting with averaging a person's 10 best - it cuts off the top of the pyramid, thus relegating it to "what can you onsite" - which is what most are doing in the 10's and 11's.

For a typical 1-2-4-8 pyramid, averaging the top 10 grades would be 2 grades below the max (actually, 1.9).  So if you have redpointed 1X 12a with a typical pyramid, the top-10-average would be 11c.  There's still less than 10% of people climbing at that grade in that dataset, it's nowhere near 50%, let alone the 80% you are claiming.

I like the question. The best answers don’t boil down to auto-erotic summaries of one’s own days of glory and athletic feats. Just dreams of big days outside with friends. Ride somewhere on a bike and climb?  Link preposterous multi pitches? Climb thru the night! Do insane day of laps at the crag you take for granted on the climbs you have wired?  Maybe it is just the rad/chemo talking, but when I get back to climbing, SOON, it is all about combining the infinite challenges with days outside with friends. Like it has always been.  Thank God for Climbing. 

what sparked the question was I have a friend who had to drop out of the marathon due to an injury, and we want to work towards a climbing goal instead that would require a similar level of commitment/training. what we landed on was RA free or potentially something slightly harder but loving all of the discussion here!!!

Matt Lauwrote:

what sparked the question was I have a friend who had to drop out of the marathon due to an injury, and we want to work towards a climbing goal instead that would require a similar level of commitment/training. what we landed on was RA free or potentially something slightly harder but loving all of the discussion here!!!

What’s RA? Is that Royal Arches? Unless it’s your first day on rock, that’s a far easier day than a marathon.

highaltitudeflatulentexpulsionwrote:

What’s RA? Is that Royal Arches? Unless it’s your first day on rock, that’s a far easier day than a marathon.

I can see it being easier, but far easier? I'm not so sure. I'll have to let you know when I've done both to compare :) 

Matt Lauwrote:

I can see it being easier, but far easier? I'm not so sure. I'll have to let you know when I've done both to compare :) 

I think physically, much easier. It's very achievable basically off the couch. 

It does require skills that could take an equally long to develop if starting from scratch, much like running a marathon starting at no running fitness. 

Either way its a lot of fun!

NateB wrote:

I would say a 5 hour marathon as a cardio athlete and an ability to send a sport 12- in a few sessions as a climber would be a good baseline for calling someone "reasonably fit" - roughly the 80th % as I posted above - and statistically inclusive of the "middle of the pack".  

EDIT:

vvvvvv - okay, let's call it 12a in a gym - delete all that crazy outdoor stuff and focus just on the fitness and basic movement for the grade.  

Kyle already commented on this upthread, but you seem to have a misunderstanding of what the 80th percentile means here. There is absolutely no way that 80% of climbers are able to climb 12a. The data you're citing indicates the inverse—20% of climbers able to climb 12a, which even that sounds unrealistically high. 

Eric Horst considers 12a roughly the upper limit of what most climbers will be able to achieve primarily via experience and consistent dedicated skills acquisition (i.e. time on the wall and dialing in your technique). To climb harder than that is going to take a significantly greater amount of time committed to the pursuit as well a major step up in off the wall training, especially strength work. Now, there are different schools of thought out there of course, and I don't know who appointed Eric Horst the authority, but as a rule of thumb it sure feels right. The mid 11s plateau is very real. 

I think the folks in here thinking of 5.12 climbing as the norm and sub-6 minute pace marathons as pedestrian are looking from a very skewed lens.

OK to give a serious answer here:  I think you need to divorce the idea of overall fitness levels from the comparison.  There's not really anything in climbing that leaves you as spent as a marathon, and the stuff that's in that area (say a grade IV+ climb) is generally not stuff you can train for in a relatively short period.  Basically everyone I've known who's done a marathon has been a relatively frequent runner, say 20 miles/week or so, decide they're going to do one, gets on a 3-4 month training plan, builds to that distance, and gets it done.  Quite a few (most?) never actually do 20+ miles ahead of the marathon.  They're pushing themselves to a new, generally not sustainable, peak, and then tapering off.  In this sense climbing has a pretty direct comparison - projecting something 2-3 grades harder than you've ever done.  This is something that's achievable for most with the same level of dedication/time commitment one puts into a marathon - maybe you need to build overall endurance, finger strength, maybe a bit of technique specific to that route, etc. and you can get it done.  Just like with a marathon, this may be a height (no pun intended) you never hit again, or it may be the start of a longer journey to harder routes (or faster marathons/longer distances).  

Nate, I, too, have been to many of the top sport areas---at least those that also offer 'moderate' options ( unlike, say Rifle and Rodellar) and my observations have been the opposite of yours. Perhaps this is because in such areas the harder routes often tend to be concentrated on different cliffs and sectors than the less difficult options, and you spend most of your time at the former, while I 'haunt' the latter!!!

NateB wrote:

Kyle is citing MP data - and poorly processed at that

Can you please link us to a better dataset?  Happy to reconsider my conclusions if the data supports it.  So far, you haven't provided any data to support your conclusions, while adamantly claiming everyone else's data is wrong. 

I don't know what crags you guys are visiting, but I've been to quite a few of the most visited sport areas all over the planet.  My general common observation is that good quality 7a and 12a (7a+) have the longest lines at the base of any grade - for exactly the above reasons - most people can do them while still being hard enough to provide an enjoyable challenge - plus bragging rights for "sending the next number grade".

My anecdotal experience disagrees, but in the end anecdotes are not data.

Out of the thousand or so climbers on any given weekend day at Rumny Wimea Wall is always mobbed with at least a dozen hard persons. ...... 

NateB wrote:

Kyle is citing MP data - and poorly processed at that - which is a more general population than the marathon race performance results I cited before.  That's why I would pick 8a.nu for an equivalent performance comparison.  If you want a comparison to MP, you'd have to include people who don't enter races - in which the 5 hour marathoner would also become maybe the top 1% of the population - as a few others have also said above - which IMO isn't a good performance comparison at all.

Horst actually chose "How to climb 5.12" for exactly the opposite - he cites it as a level most everyone can attain with some work - and I wholly agree.  It's not until somewhere in the 13's that genetics and considerable sums of experience and hard work come more into play - which he also has stated many times.

I don't know what crags you guys are visiting, but I've been to quite a few of the most visited sport areas all over the planet.  My general common observation is that good quality 7a and 12a (7a+) have the longest lines at the base of any grade - for exactly the above reasons - most people can do them while still being hard enough to provide an enjoyable challenge - plus bragging rights for "sending the next number grade".

Honestly this just reinforces my thought that you and some others in this thread are looking at this through a very skewed lens.

Bowing out though. The OP chimed in and he’s basically looking for a good objective for him and his friend to pursue, which, this entire navel gazing thread is very much not that. 

Kyle Tarrywrote:

Can you please link us to a better dataset?  Happy to reconsider my conclusions if the data supports it.  So far, you haven't provided any data to support your conclusions, while adamantly claiming everyone else's data is wrong. 

My anecdotal experience disagrees, but in the end anecdotes are not data.

Several years back someone analyzed the data on 8a.nu. I seem to recall that median RP for men was 7b+ and 7a+ for women. 

NateB wrote:

Kyle is citing MP data - and poorly processed at that - which is a more general population than the marathon race performance results I cited before.  That's why I would pick 8a.nu for an equivalent performance comparison.  If you want a comparison to MP, you'd have to include people who don't enter races - in which the 5 hour marathoner would also become maybe the top 1% of the population - as a few others have also said above - which IMO isn't a good performance comparison at all.

Horst actually chose "How to climb 5.12" for exactly the opposite - he cites it as a level most everyone can attain with some work - and I wholly agree.  It's not until somewhere in the 13's that genetics and considerable sums of experience and hard work come more into play - which he also has stated many times.

I don't know what crags you guys are visiting, but I've been to quite a few of the most visited sport areas all over the planet.  My general common observation is that good quality 7a and 12a (7a+) have the longest lines at the base of any grade - for exactly the above reasons - most people can do them while still being hard enough to provide an enjoyable challenge - plus bragging rights for "sending the next number grade".

Agree that 5.12 should be achievable by many people, but less than roughly 2% do.

Here’s why the poster who pointed out the 1-2-4-8 pyramid to 5.12a averages a 5.11c. That basically means you’d be a 5.11c climber to some and to others such as yourself a 5.12 climber.

It’s an interpretative thing, and to some unless you’re climbing 5.12b/c at least once a session and average 5.12, you’re not yet a “5.12” climber.

Others may interpret being a 5.12 climber as climbing at least one 5.12a per session or even once a week?