The Ultra-Trail Kosciuszko event is held in the Snowy Mountains in Australia in late November early December every year.
This is the highest peak in Australia and as discovered, altitude impacts performance.
The 100km event starts at Perisher Village at 1720m, climbs to the top of Mount Kosciuszko at 2228m, and stays above 1600m for the first 60km of the race.
Physio and ultra runner, Mark Green, decided to give the Ultra Trail Kosci 100 a crack in 2024.
He has been racing ultras since 1988, and he describes Ultra-Trail Kosci as his toughest ever day on the trails (you can read his full race report )
After reflecting on what went wrong during his Kosci race, Mark shares some learnings on what may have impacted his performance.
My race did not go as expected
I spoke to a lot of runners in the days after the race and without exception they had all found Ultra-Trail Kosci harder than the Ultra-Trail Australia event in the Blue Mountains which really surprised me.
The UTA100 has 4500m of vert. The Kosci100 has 3100m. On paper it looks like Kosci should be quite a lot easier, and therefore probably faster. My time at Kosci was 2 1/2 hours slower than my UTA time.
Why?
Admittedly father time is catching up with me. I am now 51. Last time I ran the UTA100 I was 46. I think that age could possibly be worth 30 minutes, but not 2 1/2 hours. So what else went wrong?
Ultra-Trail Kosci altitude impacts performance
As much as it pains me to admit, I now think I made the fairly simple error of not accounting for the altitude, or put even more painfully – I started too fast!
Looking back now at my heart rate data (I was wearing an arm band reader, so the numbers should be accurate), I was in Zone 3 or Zone 4 for the first 66km. Then the wheels fell off and I drifted down into Zone 2, then the wheels fell even further off and for the last 15km I could only manage a Zone 1 level of effort.
Even with some basic research on the effects of altitude you will quickly find out that high altitude running spikes your heart rate, increases your perceived exertion and reduces your running efficiency. You have to slow down to account for this.
I thought I was running fairly conservatively, but it wasn’t conservative enough and I paid the price.
Over the weekend I listened to a podcast of American ultra runner and running coach David Roche being interviewed by Rich Roll .
David recently won the Leadville 100 miler, beating a 20 year old record in the process. It was his first 100 miler. David has a very scientific approach to his training and coaching, so it is quite insightful listening to his thoughts and ideas on heart rate, nutrition, fatigue resistance and a whole bunch of other things.
He spent the whole of the Leadville race near the top of Zone 2 and he understands his body so well that he predicted his finish time within 30 seconds despite it being his first miler!
The lesson for me, and I hope for you, if you decide to enter a high altitude event one day, is that you need to start slow. Ideally using heart rate to define your pace.
I knew that my heart rate was high, but stupidly decided to ignore it. Someone asked me yesterday “does the old Mark Green still have the same race plan as the young Mark Green.”
Unfortunately my answer to that is “yes”.
Kosci has proved to be a painful but valuable lesson.
The lessons I have learned from this race will go into tweaking my Kosci training plans for next year, so I can help others avoid the mistakes that I made.
For anyone who wants to learn more, here is an article that dives a bit deeper into the physiological effects of running at high altitude, and what you can do to mitigate the effects.
Learn more about our Kosci training plan and race resources here
Thanks to www.sportograf.com for the race photos
