Tor des Géants: leg 1

The first base vita of the Tor is in Valgrisanche. Runners have covered there 49 km with 3996 D+. And we have intermediate times in La Thuile.
Let’s see what we can learn from this first stage. What are the fastest times this far?
In La Thuile those are (runners between [] did not finish the race)

Colle Franco 2:12 (2013)
[Le Saux Christophe 2:12 (2013)]
Le Saux Christophe 2:13 (2012)
Voeffray Julien 2:14 (2013)
Le Saux Christophe 2:15 (2011)
[Calvo Redo Salvador 2:15 (2011)]
[Brunod Dennis 2:15 (2011)]
[Gross Ulrich 2:15 (2011)]
Perez Oscar 2:15 (2012)
Rosell Fa Carles 2:15 (2012)
[Gabioud Jules Henri 2:15 (2012)]
Karrera Iker 2:15 (2013)
Gazzola Marco 2:15 (2013)

Some conclusions: Christophe likes getting out fast. And those guys either break down or hammer on to finish among the top spots. A few hours ago the first runner (Franco Colle) passed in 2:12. Very fast, but he has done it also last year and it brought him a third place. All others were well behind this pace.

Same thing for Valgrisanche:

Karrera Iker 6:49 (2013)
Colle Franco 6:52 (2013)
Bohard Patrick 7:15 (2013)
[Calvo Redo Salvado 7:17 (2011)]
Perez Oscar 7:21 (2012)
Le Saux Christophe 7:21 (2012)
Voeffray Julien 7:21 (2013)

Lionel Trivel passed just in first postion after 7:20, so it looks like we are heading for a slower edition.

The fastest times run between La Thuile and Valgrisenche are

Karrera Iker 4:34 (2013)
1550 Colle Franco 4:40 (2013)
1552 Bohard Patrick 4:58 (2013)

Lionel Trivel just ran five hours flat today, which is the fourth time in the history of the race.

La Thuile

We are of course not all running among the first. So, let’s take a look what happens with the intermediate times further on. Can we predict the finish time from those intermediate times? This is the relation between the intermediate time in La Thuile and the finish time?

Not very much. Hard to predict anything from this. What I can say is that if you pass La Thuile after more than 3 hours, you will finish in more than 100 hours and if you pass La Thuile after more than 4 hours, you are looking at a time of 140 hours or more. But that assumes that you finish, of course. When do the finishers pass in La Thuile and when can we see the quitters?

Quitters a bit everywhere, but if you are passing after more than 4.5 hours you are in bad company. And if you are passing after more than five hours, you are pretty much toast.
Finally, did the times in La Thuile change over the years? I’ll give you another violin plot for that.

i am not sure what I should conclude from this, but is interesting to see how the distribution changes over time. It looks like more runners go out really fast and the tail of slow runners got heavier. The bulk appears to shift a little towards slower times, but I am not sure how significant that is.

Valgrisanche

The same plots as above, but this time for Valgrisanche.

Still hard to predict finish times, but we start to see a band that gives us a raw idea when you will finish. If you do finish.

Valgrisanche has a time limit after 19 hours of running. The plot shows clearly that you have no fighting chance if you pass that late. You should get to Valgrisanche in less than 14 hours to be in good company. This means getting there before midnight.

This looks rather similar to what we saw in La Thuile.

Predictions

Finishing times are hard to predict from the times in the first leg, but if you are following the race you might already be happy with a prediction of the next timing. Let’s see if we can do that. This is a plot of the time between La Thuile and Valgrisanche in function of the time in La Thuile.

I am sure that you can deduce a reasonable estimate from that.

Time in Valgrisanche

To finish the discussion of leg 1, some more records. This time of the people that stayed in Valgrisanche for the longest time and still finished.

Jeannin Walter 9:51 (2010)
Yoshimoto Makoto 9:35 (2011)
Loubet Serge 8:37 (2010)

Very impressive is the performance of Walter Jeannin: he went on to finish 19th.

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