Elevation question

[carriesn]

Hi y'all.

I live in Santa Fe where there are several hills-- some tiny, some small, some medium... you get the drift.

Im just wondering what should be "easy" in terms of elevation gain? How many feet climbed? Also, what about "medium" and "difficult"? Im trying to plan different rides on maymyride.com and the elevation thing has got me scratching my head because I'm not sure what ride I should start with and the progression hereafter. Im trying to improve my riding and would like to know more on this subject.

Any help, much appreciated!

-carrie

[maillotpois]

How many feet climbed in what distance? 1000 feet in a mile can be challenging. 1000 feet in 10 miles, not so much. It's all relative. What distances are you riding?

[MartianDestiny]

I would argue that feet climbed isn't really the main issue (other than at some point you are going to hit an endurance threshold and just get tired).

Feet climbed per mile (ie: GRADE) is the main issue.

I believe mapmyride will allow you to view an "elevation profile" with % grade (do this by clicking on "Show Elevation" in the "info and tools" box in the map window (right hand side)).

It will map your ride out into average gradient chunks and is even nice enough to color code them to give an idea of difficulty.

For instance attached is a screen cap of one of my long, but basically doable by anyone climbs. Maximum grade is 4% (and is marked in an orange color) which you definitely feel after an hour of climbing, but not what I'd classify as painfully hard.

5-6-7% is where things can start getting pretty darn difficult if you aren't used to it and/or geared for it.

[OakLeaf]

I agree with Martian Destiny that it's the grade much more than the total elevation gain.

I disagree that mapmyride is a good place to find it though. They use VERY wide contour lines that wind up smoothing out most of the climbs in the steepest (and IMO very tough) terrain.

Ridewithgps.com approximates fairly well the elevation gain that I get from my Garmin.

Best way to measure a ride for yourself is to get a computer with a barometric altimeter, or a riding partner who has one. There are some models without GPS that are pretty reasonably priced.

[MartianDestiny]

I would hope a free internet service is not as good in resolution as a $300-500 personal bike computer and GPS. (or without the GPS for what? $100 or so. That's still not especially cheap) What something like Mapmyride (and there are others) would do for you is give you a preview of a ride. A bike computer, better resolution aside, means you have to ride the course before you know what you are getting into, which is not always what you want.

Mapmyride is still reasonably functional, serves a purpose, and it's free. But honestly I only used it in my post because the OP said she was using it.

[OakLeaf]

It's true it's not "as good," but that wasn't my objection... mapmyride isn't even close.

Actually, for that matter, GPS is extremely inaccurate on elevation. Many rather inexpensive computers have barometric altimeters. GPS post-correction is nice, but if you need to choose one or the other, choose barometric. Read the complaints (and the responses of the experienced users) on the Garmin forums concerning the elevation data from the GPS-only 310XT. Last week mine gave me over 900 feet of elevation gain on an 18-mile run in coastal Florida. Sure I had to cross the bridge twice, but...

As an example comparing the two online sites I mentioned: the first day of this year's Columbus Fall Challenge, a notoriously tough ride.

Mapmyride gives the maximum grade as 3% (!) and a total elevation gain of 3950 feet.

Here's the same route (plus a couple of extra miles on the end) on ridewithgps. They list a total elevation gain of 8632 feet and a maximum grade of 20.6%.

Anyone who's ridden that ride and/or mapped it with their own barometric altimeter - with or without GPS - will tell you that the ridewithgps data is very close to reality (although it still probably underestimates the total elevation gain by a few hundred feet).

And it's all because of mapmyride's wide contour lines.

That's all I'm saying. I like mapmyride, I use it all the time, I find it the easiest way to export .gpx files, but when I want to know approximate elevation data, I use ridewithgps.