To test the importance of starting at a not-so-fast pace, we plotted #UTMB finish times against average rank gain after Les Contamines, which is 31km or 12% of average time into the race. There's an obvious and unsurprising trend here - if you want to finish in the top 150 finishers (<31:15), you need to be a net overtaker after the first couple of stages. Makes sense as you can really lose a lot of time if your early push leads to a late race blow up - or DNF!
And women continue to be better pacers, with net overtakes of 315 after Contamines, versus 268 for the men. Most people are well positive given the DNFs. #T8run #trailrunning #ultrarunner