Seattle Forrest

I tried to pick a number that's attainable by pretty much everyone, except people in Florida. (Sorry.) This isn't quite a mile, and you have a whole month to do it. If this isn't challenging enough for you, though, please feel free to substitute a more aggressive goal.

There are three prizes:

• An achievement to be proud of,
• Lots of fun, especially on the way down, and probably great scenery to enjoy from your bike,
• More strength as a result.

This works on the honor system, like the X miles threads. Only, for this challenge, it doesn't matter how many miles you ride, just how much elevation. Any hill climbing you do on a bike counts toward the goal.

Who's in?

TrojanHorse

10k for me! What's your goal, you billy goat. I know you're sandbagging if you say 5k.

Black wallnut 

I'm sure i'll do that but the apps I use do not seem to tabulate that metric. Maybe I should start a ticker to track that as well......... or maybe simply instead of miles.

chefisaac

I will take the 5,000 feet in elevation. I am in!

Beachgrad05

Count me in. Have rides this month with hills!

Seattle Forrest

I thought about that before posting this, a lot, and "goal" keeps morphing into "prediction." My riding has changed since I realized I can throw the bike in the car and go somewhere else to pedal ... I stopped thinking about numbers, and now I think about specific rides. If the weather (and my schedule) allows, I want to do Hurricane Ridge this month, and at least one BOMROD (Best of Mount Rainier in One Day). I guess my real goal is to spend more time in the mountains.

I'd like to do 5,000 feet or so ... on Saturday. And no, I won't carry sand bags.

Probably around 20,000 for the month, but the one thing that could undo me is if I wind up doing a lot of backpacking this month. Most of the places I want to go are still snowed out, though.

Mithrandir

If all goes well, tonight I should be hitting 8000ft/500mi (16ft/mi), and that's with only 1 specific hill ride this month. For June my plan is to increase my hill training to once a week so I should get in 4 hilly rides. Perhaps 12k will be obtainable for me. I'll shoot for 12,000ft/600mi (20ft/mi).

paisan

Sandbagger. We're going to get at least 4k on Saturday.

Mr Sinister

I'll give it a shot. The only problem I have is most of the hills are just rolling hills, about 20-100 feet tall. I know they all add up, but that means a ton of rolling hills. ( Did I mention I hate hill work?)

Elevation last 3 months
March ~ 19,821
April ~ 6,466
May ~ 7,296

Seattle Forrest

What are you using?

If you have GPX files for all your rides, and run Windows, I can send you an app I wrote that calculates metrics.

wfournier

Yeah next two weekends I'm looking at 10k, I'm going to say 20k.

TrojanHorse

Now we just have to work on that prize list...

Pride is good and all, but how's about picking up one of those Cervelos I see laying all over Washington and shipping it over?

jr59

I got no chance!

I can ride 3000 miles and not get that around here!

CBuff

I need to work more on hills anyway.
I'm in for 10,000.

1855Cru

I only managed to get in 7 rides in May but still got 14,700 ft. I shooting for at least 20-25,000 ft in June. 13,000+ of that will come in one ride!!!

Seattle Forrest

That sounds like a really good idea! But it can be improved on. Suppose someone were to take a bike vacation to WA, do some climbing in the mountains where all those bikes have been spotted (I see them laying around everywhere on my rides!), get your miles and your altitude in, and finance the trip by selling the bikes you find?

Somebody must have abandoned this one to snow shoe on the Pacific Crest Trail:

vesteroid

I have never tracked that metric, does garmin connect report on it anyway that you guys know of?

I am in, I'll try the 5k just to see what happens.

CraigB

5K of climbing would require me to ride my usual 50 mile route every day for the full month.

CommuteCommando

Easy for me, in a manner of speaking. I usually do 1000 ft in a single weekend ride. It's hard not to do where I live. I'm in.

I've been tracking rides on Endomondo, but I suspect the elevations recorded by that, and other GPS apps, are off to the high side by at least 10%, and possibly as high as 15-20%. This is due to the nature of the elevation data, which is interpolated from points taken during a satellite radar survey. If you go over a bridge, it may, or may not depending on where the datum points are registered, record you as going down then back up the bridged feature.

Example, this is the traverse of a valley on a bridge that is relatively flat in Orange county (did it on a club ride last month) https://ridewithgps.com/routes/1259344

paisan

Yes, elevation gain shows up in the summary box for each ride on the left side of the screen. You can also run a report and it will show you the total gained for the report range.

Clipped_in

Ha, that describes me pretty well. I'm in for 20k in June, but I usually drop off quite a bit in July and August for the reason SF mentioned.

Seattle Forrest

Garmin Connect has an option - it's a button you can click - to ignore the elevation data in the file, and instead use USGS altitude data for the points you went over.

I don't know if GC will aggregate this for you, but if you go into the individual rides, the total altitude gain is on the left, near the top, along with ride time, max speed, etc. You also get elevation charts, like this:



I like a program called SportTracks; it does the same stuff, but you can lay things like your speed, cadence, and/or heart rate over the ele data. And it'll total your elevation gain by month, year, or whatever. So will Golden Cheetah, which is free. I wrote an app that'll total the altitude gain in a bunch of GPX file, but it doesn't correct them first, and requires Windows. Honestly, I'd recommend someone else's app.

I don't track mine, except on a per-ride basis. Every now and then I'll have the computer calculate a total for whatever time period I'm interested in. For the purposes of this challenge, I'm not going to keep a spreadsheet or anything, but part of that is because I'll get my 5,000 feet in a single ride, maybe a few times.

Daspydyr 

I think for the Clyde and Athena thread 5K is a good climbing goal. I am in! And remember SF, most of mine will be MTBing. Skinny tires scare me. Show me the dust, its Biblical ya know. From the dust we were taken and to the dust we shall return. Its our destiny to ride trails! We are not "made" to ride pavement!

ChrisM2097

I'm in. I did ~160 miles and 3,200' in May, and I know I can do better. I've got a 1,000' ~10% grade climb pretty much in my backyard that I should be able to do at least a few times during the month.

goldfinch

I'm in for 5000, even though I am not yet sure where I am going to be in June.