In reply to Es Tresidder:
> But he's not doing 1200m ascent per hour on the Eiger. The Eiger north face is 1800m of ascent, and his record is 2 hours 22 minutes. Amazing, but not 1200m/hr ascent rate.
Ah, ta - I was going on the figures given upthread. Still amazing and impressive, though, both in terms of steady speed and of course the technical aspects. If I may ask, do you have any ascent-rate figures for the uphill sections of your very fast Cuillin ridge time? Or generally for hard training runs on steep ground? In terms of the fastest feasible rate, one example could be Kenny Stuart's record time for the Alva Games hill race. This was set in 1981 and still stands - he managed it in 18m 39s (I don't think anyone else has broken 19 minutes). As you'll know, it's an out-and-back race on possibly the steepest slope of any race in the UK. The overall ascent is reckoned to be 385m (in 1.3km distance), but the first gentler bit of that is the exit from the park and across the golf course, so the main slope is about 350m.
Assuming the park sections at either end take about 2m 30s all told, that leaves 16 minutes for the hill section, and having watched the race a few times it seems reasonable to assume splits of roughly 13 minutes up, three down for that pace (watching the leaders descend is like watching controlled falling). An ascent of 350m in 13 minutes converts to almost 27 metres per minute, or 1615 metres per hour. Given that Kenny Stuart was as good a hill runner as these shores have produced, and that was him entering his prime (his records for the Ben, Skiddaw and Snowdon came during 1984-85), and with Alva being such a steep race, 1600m per hour looks to be close to what's feasible on that kind of slope at least - although whether anyone could sustain that over a full hour is another question.
What are the approximate splits for the Ben race (1000m more ascent than Alva, but less brutal in terms of angle) for the 90-minute people? 65 minutes up, 25 down?