Abstract
We build on recent work on the application of case-based reasoning to help marathon runners to plan and pace their races. We apply related ideas to the domain of ultra running (typically >100 km routes across mountainous or desert terrain). This new domain introduces its own distinct challenges: distance and terrain make for a more physically demanding and less predictable event; weather can play a very significant role in how competitors perform; and, unlike road marathons, race routes and distances vary from year to year, making it more difficult to compare race records. We evaluate case-based methods for pace prediction and pacing recommendation for runners in the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), one of the world’s toughest ultra-marathons.
Keywords
Supported by Science Foundation Ireland through the Insight Centre for Data Analytics under grant number SFI/12/RC/2289.
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- 1.
The Tour du Mont Blanc is one of the most popular long-distance walks in Europe. It circles the Mont Blanc massif and is normally walked in a counter-clockwise direction in 11 days; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_du_Mont_Blanc.
- 2.
Note we do not use the fastest finish-time because race length tends to vary from year to year depending on conditions and stages and hence mean race pace serves as a more realistic measure performance.
- 3.
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McConnell, C., Smyth, B. (2019). Going Further with Cases: Using Case-Based Reasoning to Recommend Pacing Strategies for Ultra-Marathon Runners. In: Bach, K., Marling, C. (eds) Case-Based Reasoning Research and Development. ICCBR 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11680. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29249-2_24
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