Registration is now open for inaugural Le Grand du Nord (100mi. or 50mi) out of Grand Marais, MN. This race is put on by the seasoned pros who put on the "Heck of the North" race, so it's bound to be epic! Though the exact course isn't known, I'm pretty familiar with the hinterlands in between the start/finish and the halfway checkpoint: it - is - re-MOTE!
I was comparing the climbing/elevation stats for the proposed 2016 Le Grand du Nord route vs. the 2016 Almanzo (which was held last weekend).
Turns out, Le Grand du Nord will be slightly hillier. On balance, however, at least there isn't a brutal climb at mile 92. The final significant climb is at mile 70....then it's all downhill!
Le Grand du Nord is in the books. It was a great race....I'll definitely be back next year for the early-season punishment!
In reference to my previous posts comparing it with the Almanzo 100, it turns out that, this year anyway, it looks like the Almanzo was a more difficult course. I reached this conclusion by comparing the average finishing times of the top 25% of all finishers from both races: Almanzo = 6:42:32 while Le Grand du Nord = 6:13:33.
I'd guess the main contributing factor to the above time discrepancy was the Almanzo's windier race day. But I also noticed that my Garmin's calculated 'elevation gain' from Le Grand du Nord was only 5,320' (much less than the nearly 5,992' that Map My Ride calculated!)
