Long Distance Competition/Ultracycling, Randonneuring and Endurance Cycling - A question about mapmyride.com
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About http://www.mapmyride.com/
When it gives me the following information about the route I mapped:
max: 7769ft
min: 2593ft
ascent: 16275ft
descent: 14154ft
What does that mean? How many feet did I climb?
Tom Stormcrowe
05-29-07, 06:31 AM
About http://www.mapmyride.com/
When it gives me the following information about the route I mapped:
max: 7769ft
min: 2593ft
ascent: 16275ft
descent: 14154ft
What does that mean? How many feet did I climb?
Ascent= your total climbing feet over the duration of the ride. You finished up the ride 2160 feet higher than you started and climbed in excess of 16000 feet total
That's a lot of climbing!
Is this from your 600k? Can you share the route?
About http://www.mapmyride.com/
When it gives me the following information about the route I mapped:
max: 7769ft
min: 2593ft
ascent: 16275ft
descent: 14154ft
What does that mean? How many feet did I climb?
According to mapmyride, you climbed 16275 ft and descended 14154 ft. If you did a loop ride, the disparity between the two numbers should be a red flag that something is wrong. In theory, they should be equal. 2000 ft is a large error.
However, do not take total climb calculations very seriously. Online mapping programs typically do simple elevation lookups between the points you enter and assume the terrain is a constant climb, or descent between each point. This may result in a gross underestimation of total climb if you do not enter enough route points.
Conversely, if you enter too many points, you will get an overestimate of total climb because the elevation databases used by these programs has enough random error that relatively flat stretches can mistakenly be considered slow climbs. Since adding up total climb only adds up increases in elevation between route points, negative errors that would otherwise tend to balance out the positive errors are not included in the calculations.
I suspect that, in your case, 16275 ft is an underestimate. In another thread you comment on this route having a large amount of climbing. 16,000 ft. is not a tremendous amount for 600K. My 600K in North Texas registered over 16,000 ft of climb and, although hilly, was not excessively so.
The route I mapped was the last day of the Golden Triangle, from Golden, BC to Castle Junction. It is about 110 kms in distance, and climbs pretty much the whole way.
I did the Golden Triangle on the weekend of May 19-21, and felt like I did a lot of climbing, so I thought I'd map the last day as an experiment to see what sort of results I got.
When I read those numbers, my guess was that I did either about 5000 ft of climbing (the differerence between the max and the min) or about 2000 ft of climbing (the difference between the ascent and decent) ... but could it really be that I did 16000 ft of climbing in 110 kms??? If that's the case, then maybe there's a reason I was tired when I finished that day!!
I'm mapping my 600K route right now with mapmyroute, and if I wasn't confused before, I'm completely baffled now.
As I map, the ascent number keeps going up and down and up and down. Instead, shouldn't it add up all the ascents together to come to some total by the end of the ride? And add up all the descents together to come to a total for that as well?
The total ascent and decent should each get larger as the route progresses. It may be that mapmyride has some bugs in the software.
Waxbytes
05-30-07, 12:12 PM
I'm beginning to have my doubts about the reliability of mapmyride as some of the results are not adding up correctly on routes I know well.
Guess free and accurate don't go together too well for mapping software?
songfta
06-10-07, 11:18 AM
Don't forget that MapMyRide (and many other online mapping sites) uses data that is based on raw topo map data. Thus, if you cross a bridge over a gorge, it'll count the topography of the gorge, not of the flat road/bridge - you'll add some descent and climb data to the mix.
And in my experience, it really does help to be more precise with your mapping: adding more points, etc. The climbing data can be a lot better in winding, hilly road areas if you place more points.
But as was mentioned before, these sites are a work-in-progress. There's a lot of newness to it all, and precision isn't quite there yet (e.g. correction for distance over topography, etc.).