There are two kinds of maths in this world. First, there’s ordinary maths. Reliable maths. The sort that tells you if a checkpoint is nine miles away and you’re moving at three miles an hour, you’ll get there in three hours. Then there’s Mountain Maths.
Mountain Maths is the curious, highly flexible arithmetic practised by ultra runners somewhere between confidence, exhaustion and low-level dehydration. It often starts innocently enough…
“Next checkpoint is only nine miles away.”
Only. Nine miles, in normal life, is respectable. It’s a decent bike ride, a drive to a local beauty spot, the sort of walk people mention proudly. But in Mountain Maths, nine miles could mean:
- Three hours if the climb is kind
- Four if the descent wrecks your quads
- Five if the bog claims a shoe
- Six if darkness arrives and morale leaves
Distance stops being distance. Miles become terrain. Terrain becomes time. Time becomes mood. Mood is a ropey balance between positivity and soul-destroying realism.
The Formula Nobody Mentions
Road runners ask:
“What pace are you doing?”
Ultra runners ask:
“What’s the elevation like?”
Because a mile on the road is usually a mile. A mile in the mountains might include:
- 1,200 feet of climbing
- a river crossing
- a gate with personal issues
- sideways rain
- a field full of judgemental sheep
- an unexpected crisis of spirit
- cows. I have a incomprehensible fear of cows. They’re just big. Their heads are big. Big, terrifiying monsters! I go round the cows, not through them.
Which is why mountain runners can study a map for ten seconds and declare:
“Yes… two hours forty, I’d say.”
No calculator. No spreadsheet. Just instinct sharpened by previous suffering.
Checkpoint Delusion
Every ultra runner knows the routine. You leave an aid station transformed. Bottles full. Stomach settled. Bowels emptied. Mood restored.
You tell yourself:
“Strong section now. I’ll cruise this.”
Twenty minutes later you’re bent double, hauling yourself uphill through heather, wondering why your watch says you’re travelling at 1.8 mph. This is where Mountain Maths becomes intimate. You begin recalculating…
“Right… if I hold 2.5 from here… unless the ridge is awful… then I can still make the cutoff… assuming I don’t sit down… which I probably won’t…”
The Cruel Comfort of Mountain Maths
Mountain Maths can be harsh because it removes fantasy. You may want the next checkpoint to be ninety minutes away. The mountain may disagree. It teaches certain truths:
- You are not running ten-minute miles up that slope
- Mud remains undefeated
- Darkness slows everything
- The second half is always longer than the first
- ‘Just one more climb’ is rarely accurate
And yet it can be oddly reassuring. Once you accept the numbers, reality becomes manageable. Three hours to the next checkpoint? Fine. Eat something. Keep moving. Enjoy the sunrise. Swear when necessary. Don’t die.
Signs You’ve Learned Mountain Maths
You know it’s taken hold when:
- You describe a four-hour section as ‘not too bad’
- You measure progress in proetin bars consumed
- You estimate arrival times by staring at hills and sighing
- You say ‘mostly downhill’ about a route with 2,000 feet of climbing
- You trust no published race mileage
Final Calculation
However, mountain Maths isn’t really about numbers. It’s about understanding how effort, terrain, weather, fatigue and hope combine into one shifting equation. It is flawed, it is emotional… And it is occasionally disastrous. But when you reach a checkpoint exactly when you predicted? You feel like a genius. Until someone tells you the next one is only eleven miles away.
Fuck off.
Anyway, Insta here, more shit blog posts here.
