Mallorca 5000 by UTMB - Course and Pacing

On the 1st of Nov I’ll be racing the UTMB’s Mallorca 5000 100k offering, it’s a 43 mile run with 5000ft elevation gain through Mallorca’s Tramuntana mountains. In the lead up to this I’ll be posting 5 times covering – Course analysis (this post!), nutrition, training, pre race/equipment, and post race.

1st post - Course analysis!

The race is 42.65 miles long (they are always long so probably 45) with 14,268ft elevation, giving an average ft/mile of 334ft per mile average. Terrain from pictures looks very loose and rocky, no grass in sight, and one race report I’ve seen states “the hardest terrain I’ve ever ran on”. Based on this I’ll try to estimate total race time, this will also help work out nutrition. 

Over the years I’ve collected data on my running over various mountainous routes to allow me to predict roughly what time it will take to cover distance over an average elevation. You can do this yourself with Garmin data and a good memory.

Picture 1 and 2 – Ft/mile chart, and a snip of input data.

Recent runs plotted as pace against ft/mile

Graph input data

So! For an average elevation of 334ft/mile, over technical terrain, with a full pack over 43 miles I’ll be on the higher side of the trend line and estimate I’ll do roughly 15 minute miles for the 43 miles, with 2 minutes per hour for toilet, water and aid stops. Giving a total estimated race time of 11 hours and 6 minutes.

Another way to back this up is to look at previous results and race times, in the last 2 ultras I’ve competed in (albeit longer) have been Arc of attrition where I placed 18% in finishers and UTMB’s TDS, where I placed 14% in finishers. Last years route was slightly different, more elevation but slightly shorter, I’m going to assume those cancel each other out! A time of 11:06 would have me finish in 18th position last year, which would be 12.7% in finishers, which is in the same ball park so I’m reasonably confident, barring disaster I’ll be around 11 hours.

At this distance, its probably not that important to get this perfect, but at longer distances and durations this can be crucial to get right for optimal pacing and nutrition planning.

Another important aspect to consider is spacing of aid stations, not just the distance between, but the terrain in between them, there might be a spacing of 8k between aid stations but if there is a 2000m climb in between it might take 3 hours!

Picture 3 – Mallorca 5000 Elevation Profile

UTMMB Mallorca Elevation

For the Mallorca 5000, the longest gap between aid is Coll De Sa Lina to Lluc, which is 12.4km (7.65 miles) and 1928ft elevation between, giving an average elevation of 252ft/mile. Which for me is probably 12:30 miles, and a leg time of roughly 95 minutes. These numbers are also important for planning nutrition. I’ll go into this in more detail in further posts.