Prouty Century Fixed
07-08-14, 08:39 AM
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Prouty Century Fixed
Is anybody familiar with the Prouty century in New Hampshire? I've got friends up there who invited me along. They're fit people, but bike novices, I'm pretty sure, and I'm confident I could hang with them. The only caveat is that I'll be riding fixed. It's not too tall a gear, but 48x17 probably isn't ideal if there are a bunch of peaks and valleys. I'm attaching an elevation chart for those who can read such things. (This chart reflects a 50-mile stretch.) Thanks for any and all advice.
07-08-14, 09:02 AM
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don't try this at home.
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Your chart looks like it came from mapmyride.com. Their maps and charts are pretty useless for analyzing rides, not enough detail. I use ridewithgps instead.
~~~
I googled Prouty Century ridewithgps and found quite a few routes and recorded rides.
Is this the route? 2011 Prouty Century
Pull down the Map list at the top right and select Terrain, then zoom in. Each contour line is 40 feet, with darker lines every 200 feet. A lot of the route follows stream and river valleys, instead of choosing roads that go up and over the mountains.
The bottom red elevation graph looks intimidating. But drag to select one climb at a time, and look on the Metrics tab.
The big climb at mile 19 is about 850 feet in 8 miles. It's average grade is only 1.8% with a max of 5.5%. That's pretty easy on a geared road bike. And there's easy sections of 1% or less at a few points in the climb. You'll have to decide how long of a 5% grade you can handle on your fixed gear bike.
~~~~~~~~~~~
This recorded trip reports steeper grades, but it could easily be wrong. And the reported steeper grades are spikes on the expanded charts, so it could be a GPS/barometer exaggeration. (click the three horizontal lines tab in the elevation graph)
The big spike, 9% grade, at mile 10.7 reports 9% for .1 mile (or about 500 feet distance along the road) It's on US5 just after crossing the river. The hill is 100 feet high, and the steep part is maybe 50 or 60 feet high. Either power up it, or get off and walk if needed. It's short.
I looked at a couple of the other grade spikes. They are similar, very short steep grades that level off after .1 mile or so.
~~~
I googled Prouty Century ridewithgps and found quite a few routes and recorded rides.
Is this the route? 2011 Prouty Century
Pull down the Map list at the top right and select Terrain, then zoom in. Each contour line is 40 feet, with darker lines every 200 feet. A lot of the route follows stream and river valleys, instead of choosing roads that go up and over the mountains.
The bottom red elevation graph looks intimidating. But drag to select one climb at a time, and look on the Metrics tab.
The big climb at mile 19 is about 850 feet in 8 miles. It's average grade is only 1.8% with a max of 5.5%. That's pretty easy on a geared road bike. And there's easy sections of 1% or less at a few points in the climb. You'll have to decide how long of a 5% grade you can handle on your fixed gear bike.
~~~~~~~~~~~
This recorded trip reports steeper grades, but it could easily be wrong. And the reported steeper grades are spikes on the expanded charts, so it could be a GPS/barometer exaggeration. (click the three horizontal lines tab in the elevation graph)
The big spike, 9% grade, at mile 10.7 reports 9% for .1 mile (or about 500 feet distance along the road) It's on US5 just after crossing the river. The hill is 100 feet high, and the steep part is maybe 50 or 60 feet high. Either power up it, or get off and walk if needed. It's short.
I looked at a couple of the other grade spikes. They are similar, very short steep grades that level off after .1 mile or so.
Last edited by rm -rf; 07-08-14 at 09:34 AM.
