Compete · the daily course
Ridgeline
One button and one ridge, with a new course every day. Hold to push and let go to ease. Keep your heart in the band, make each checkpoint before it closes, and pick up whatever you think you can carry. You score the haul: load × distance, to the hundredth.
Ridgeline
Daily course · No. 1- Keep the heart-rate line in the band
- Past the red line the reserve drains fast
- Reach each control before it closes
- Ease through the bracket to take a sandbag
HoldSpaceto push · let go to ease
Space or touch: hold to push · P: pause · M: sound
Reading today's board…
How Ridgeline works
The walker is the calculators, played fast
Speed on every metre of the ridge comes from Tobler's hiking function: quickest on a gentle descent, a little over half pace up a 15% climb. The cost of that speed comes from the Pandolf equation with the Santee downhill correction, the same model the calorie calculator publishes, for an 80 kg walker on a dirt trail carrying whatever is in the pack.
Heart rate follows that cost with a lag, rising faster than it falls. One second of play is thirty seconds on the ridge, so a three-minute run is an hour and a half on your feet, and the receipt prints it that way.
The band, the red line and the reserve
Between 145 and 161 bpm the work is hard but sustainable. Hold the line there and flow builds, which makes every stride cheaper, so the same heart rate buys more speed. Above the band a reserve drains, and faster past the red line. When it is empty you blow up: you stop until your heart comes down, then walk it off until the reserve is back, and the last sandbag you picked up stays on the trail.
Letting go does not stop the heart at once, just as it does not on a real climb. The dashed lines ahead of the cursor show where the next second goes if you hold, and if you let go.
Checkpoints and the sweeper
There is a control at every kilometre. Each one adds the time a steady 5.6 km/h walker needs for the next leg, times an allowance that shrinks every leg and faster from the seventh. Early on the clock forgives; later it asks for more than any load allows for long. Time banked early is what gets you further. Miss a cutoff and the sweeper's van collects you.
The score is the haul
Everyone sets off with 10 kg. Sandbags of 2, 3 and 5 kg lie along the ridge: ease through the bracket before one to take it, or hold the push to walk past. Every 10 metres scores the kilograms you are carrying at that moment, so the haul is an exact number of hundredths and every line on the receipt multiplies out.
More weight scores faster and costs more heart. Carry too much and the cutoffs catch you early. Where to stop picking up is the whole game.
Questions
Is it the same course for everyone?
Yes. The daily course is generated from the date, so everyone walks the same ridge with the same sandbags and the same cutoffs until midnight UTC. Practice gives you a random ridge that is never ranked.
How do you know a score is real?
A run is recorded as the moments you pressed and let go of the button, and nothing else. The server rebuilds the day's ridge and replays those presses through the same simulation your browser ran, then ranks the score the replay produces. A score cannot be typed in; a run has to be walked.
Why does my heart rate keep rising after I let go?
Because it would. Heart rate responds to effort over tens of seconds, and at thirty times speed that is a second or two of play. Ease off before the climb, not halfway up it, and use the forecast lines to see it coming.
Do I need an account to play?
No. Anyone can play, and your best run today is kept in your browser. Sign in and that run goes on the board. Only public profiles are listed on it; a private profile is ranked without being named.
Does a good score here mean anything for real rucking?
The pacing lesson carries over: ease off before the climb, spend effort where the ground is cheap, and do not carry more than you can keep moving. The real haul is still walked. Log a ruck to put one on the monthly boards.