buying a new bike

A flat century is not 3,000-4,000 ft. of climbing to me, or most others around here. I ride hills, steep ones, all of the time, but I wouldn't consider a century flat unless it had less than 2,000 feet of climbing. Yesterday, I did a 40 mile ride, with 1,500 feet of climbing. This ride always seems deceptively flat, but the hillier parts come after lunch and it hurts, even though they are not big climbs.
The 2 metrics I did this year had 3,300 and 4,200 ft. of climbing and they both killed me. My average was 13.4 and I was quite happy with that. Who cares? I am happy to be able to climb grades of 10-14%, even if it's at 3-6 mph.

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Originally Posted by Crankin

A flat century is not 3,000-4,000 ft. of climbing to me, or most others around here. I ride hills, steep ones, all of the time, but I wouldn't consider a century flat unless it had less than 2,000 feet of climbing.

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How do you figure out how many feet you are climbing. My SO will go on bicycle ride together. You would think the Garmins would give us the same data, but they are very far from agreeing on the elevations. We have tried to correct for this, but apparently aren't doing it correctly because they still don't agree.

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Originally Posted by rain

I'm really mystified by why there are so few people who seem to ride around 13mph... that would really solve this whole problem :)

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I agree!! I fall right in between the 12mph'ers and 14mph'ers. So frustrating! Happy bike shopping!

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Originally Posted by kajero

How do you figure out how many feet you are climbing. My SO will go on bicycle ride together. You would think the Garmins would give us the same data, but they are very far from agreeing on the elevations. We have tried to correct for this, but apparently aren't doing it correctly because they still don't agree.

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The garmins with barometrics will be the most accurate (500s, 800s, 910) otherwise set autocorrect in GC and it should correct the ride once it is uploaded, even the barometrics might have slight differences, but not huge ones. I take less notice of grade info on the bike though, that is a bit sketchy on the 500 or the 910.

It is interesting to read that two Garmins on the same ride would be so different from each other regarding elevation. I've considered getting one, but am holding off to see if my body can be encouraged to accept longer rides again....and I get over my current unease over riding in Indianapolis traffic.

As far as average speed, these days I fall just over 13mph and you know what? I am happy with that :) Neither my bike, nor I, am designed to be one of the fast gals. It IS encouraging that I no longer have to work really hard to get it up THAT high, which leads me to assume that if my body would accept a more traditional road bike that I would likely be faster - but that isn't my goal in riding.

Garmins always will be variable a bit. It's all just an approximation. We do look on Topo maps if we are really interested in how steep something is. I do better if I know ahead of time what kind of climb is coming up, if I am on a ride I haven't done before. While I seriously don't like doing the same route over and over again, I am always slightly "off," if I am on a new route, mostly in unfamiliar areas/cities. Not so much if I am just exploring new roads in the general vicinity of where I live. I am really not much of an explorer, though. When I first started riding, DH and I did a lot of the exploring together, and we've just enlarged it.
I had difficulty finding groups to ride with when I started riding, but I found two. I don't ride with groups very often anymore, though. These groups also provided good routes that I shared with other friends. Now they put the routes on Ride With GPS, so even if I don't ride with them, I might download a cue sheet and do the ride with just a couple of friends.

+1 on the barometric altimeters being the most accurate. GPS-only elevation is typically way off just because of the physics of the signals and the geometry of the triangulation from the satellites. Still, you're going to have some variation. They'll be the most accurate if you start from a known elevation that you've programmed into your GPS, and let the signal settle for 20 minutes or so before starting out. If you have a lot of steep grades, then one-second recording will help with elevation accuracy as well.

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Originally Posted by kajero

How do you figure out how many feet you are climbing. My SO will go on bicycle ride together. You would think the Garmins would give us the same data, but they are very far from agreeing on the elevations. We have tried to correct for this, but apparently aren't doing it correctly because they still don't agree.

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Map the ride out in advance using ridewithgps.com - it will give you elevations, Personally I don't get to hung up on comparing. A hill is a hill and if it is off a few feet oh well. Now if the hill didn't show up at all :)

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Originally Posted by Sky King

Map the ride out in advance using ridewithgps.com - it will give you elevations, Personally I don't get to hung up on comparing. A hill is a hill and if it is off a few feet oh well. Now if the hill didn't show up at all :)

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This is interesting, I've found in some places the hill doesn't show up at all on the online services. I've only noticed this a couple of times and in both cases the situation was the same. A very short and steep hill that wasn't graded at all when they built the road. It looks very much like a "bump"... an insanely steep bump (or at least they feel that way to me), and aren't long at all.

At least historically, ridewithgps used much more detailed topo maps than mapmyride. I'm not sure whether that's still the case. So very often, short steep hills like we have in the eastern US wouldn't show up on mapmyride, and a longer climb would register as a long shallow climb, instead of the reality of a series of 20% climbs and slightly shorter descents. A century with about 10,000 feet of climbing, that tracked fairly accurately on ridewithgps, would show up as about 2,500 feet on mapmyride, hardly "off a few feet."

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Originally Posted by Sky King

Map the ride out in advance using ridewithgps.com - it will give you elevations, Personally I don't get to hung up on comparing. A hill is a hill and if it is off a few feet oh well. Now if the hill didn't show up at all :)

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I am all about the hill stats LOL, when I am climbing a 3K canyon I want to know real time ascent stats more than distance. Distance isn't my worry LOL.

Another thing occurred to me on my run today: GPS is pretty sensitive to EMF interference. Riding under poorly shielded electric lines will send it wacky (you won't notice it if your wheel sensor is working); we had a car once that DH's standalone GPS wouldn't work when the CD player was running, even that little electric motor was enough to obliterate the signal. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if your DH's e-assist is interfering with at least his GPS and possibly yours as well. Besides the "usual" minor inaccuracies and occasional days when the government turns the GPS accuracy down (yep, they do that), that everyone has mentioned here.

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

+1 on the barometric altimeters being the most accurate. GPS-only elevation is typically way off just because of the physics of the signals and the geometry of the triangulation from the satellites. Still, you're going to have some variation. They'll be the most accurate if you start from a known elevation that you've programmed into your GPS, and let the signal settle for 20 minutes or so before starting out. If you have a lot of steep grades, then one-second recording will help with elevation accuracy as well.

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I guess I have to figure out even MORE things with my Garmin Edge 500.