iamtim

Just out of curiosity... what's your average amount of climbing on a regular, routine ride? I use Strava now, but before I did I never worried too much about elevation on a ride. The numbers didn't bother me much, it was just "I rode this hill" or "I took that other hill". But now I'm looking at the numbers and it's got me wondering about what's an average amount of climbing for a regular ride.

Like... 3 times a week after work I put in a 20-25 mile ride with about 1500-2100 feet of climbing. Is that a lot of climbing for that distance? Not much? An average amount? What are you folks putting in?

Lesper4

When I am not training my usualy ride is 70 miles with 6000ft 1 day a week. I would rather ride in the mountains then in the suberbs. In general I think 1000ft per 10 miles is good, it may not sounds like mcuh when you are at shorter distance (under 50 miles) but when you get to say 100 miles that is 10,000ft.

calamarichris

That's the problem with Strava--now we're all walkin' around the gym shower with no towels on.
Don't worry about the numbers or what everyone else is doing. We're all under a pretty large bell-curve and the only ones outside it are Cat2's+ & Pros who don't have jobs, families, and are too busy riding to bother posting stuff in a forum like this, (or indeed too busy riding to post it on Strava.)
Ride like you did before Strava started ruining it for you.

TJClay

what he said..........its easy to get caught up in how much climbing or how far this or that ride is. Cycling is supposed to fun. Some days i do 30 miles up and down PCH with about 300 feet of gain, other times i look for every hill in OC i can hit in a day and will get 2500-5000 in a ride. I dont really worry about it.

Gallo

dude you walk around the gym with no towel on? gotta to be some sort of code violation.

Unless I am looking for climbing your numbers seem on the above average to be what I would expect here in socal

typical ride for me is 20 miles about 1k of climbing.

If I ride the coast is flattens out a bit

If I ride the hills it increases to like close 1k per 10 miles like Lesper4 commented on. I would disagree that it does not sound like much as 1k per ten miles is an honest ride

That part of the data is cool but what I find useful is riding the route and looking at how well I did today vs the past

as a Strava junkie I rarely ride without my fix now. I think Strava helps motivate me and has enhanced my riding rather than ruin it. I obsess when I see a computer in front of me at all times so I run the iphone app and it goes in my pocket

edit

just crunched my stats for this year and got the following

average ride length 23.39
average ride time 1:45
Average Elevation 1232.22
Average speed 13.26

those are my averages so far this year

jmX

I'm not sure there is an average amount of climbing, but as mentioned by Lesper4, 1000ft/10mi (avg based on the round trip, not just the part going up the mountain) is where it starts to feel like a lot of climbing.

Chris, some people like the extra motivation Strava gives. It's not for everybody, but it certainly gives the weekend warriors an easy way to get a taste of competition without having to go full on into the thursday night races. Random middle aged rider may never be interested in a crit, but strava might be just the right motivation to push him to get his fat ass in shape to improve his ranking on the local climb. Competition can happen at all levels....from Cat 6 dads to the Pro Tour, and the gamification of a typical weekend ride can really help some people get on their bikes and get fit. Of course there are also plenty of people who are perfectly happy Just Riding Around(tm), and that is cool too, but to imply that by default Strava has somehow "ruined" riding for the OP is wrong and sounds judgmental towards the typical strava user (ie, me).

Mr. Beanz

Well you should know Tim, you did a ride with Gina and I, 42 miles with about 600 ft.

iamtim

Oh, Strava hasn't ruined it for me. I still ride like I did before, but I find the numbers (after the fact, not during a ride) interesting. Like other posters have said, I like comparing them against past number (again, after the fact) and looking at PRs on segments I ride.

I never ride for Strava stuff. I ride for me and then have fun looking at what I've done.

iamtim

You talking about the one where I bonked so hard you had to rescue me with a CLIF bar from a 7-11 a mile or so down the trail?

cdp8

If you are training for tough rides like Mulholland, Breathless, etc. then what jmX said, 100' per mile, is a good benchmark to chase. My best for a single ride was 286' per mile, but that was a one way climb up.

I'm in the anti-strava camp. Probably because I'm too damn slow to be competitive on any of the climbs. But also because the crazies chasing strava records (both on and off road) make life dangerous for other road and trail users. I think Strava should ban downhill on road segments and all off road segments. Trail access fights are tough enough without giving anti-mtbers even more ammo.

TrojanHorse

Well, one positive about strava - we get a lot less chest thumping about averaging 25 mph on a 40 mile ride these days.

I like it. I'm a pretty numerically oriented kind of guy, despite my noodle legs and it's fun to see improvement on roads / segments that I ride pretty frequently. It's no fun at all to compare my numbers to some of the speed demons around here (looking at you jmx) but really, I don't lose any sleep about that at all. All I really had back in the days of cateye was average speed / distance for a ride and that was pretty un-useful really.

1,000 feet per 10 miles is a pretty hilly ride in my book, although it's obviously a lot more tolerable at the shorter end of the scale.

hamster

30'/mile if I'm going out of my way to find flattest routes possible. 50'/mile typical when riding around the city and trying to get from point A to point B. 80'/mile if it's a climbing workout. 100'/mile if it's a climbing workout involving more than 5 minutes out of the saddle (12%+ grades) or a trip up one of the big mountains in the area.

My average year-to-date is 63'/mile and my highest average in one month is 118'/mile.

JTGraphics

Not everyone lives were they have hills my weekend are about the same.
I ride a somewhat flat 15 miles out then like last weekend the next 18 miles are hilly got in 2700 ft and 15 miles flat home.
My center section will range from 1800 - 4000 ft in 15 - 28 miles and most of my ride avg. a total milage of 34 - 45 miles out and back.

Mr. Beanz

600 ft over 42 miles is a lot of climbing.

jimxyz

I'm with the 10 mi/1000 ft group - my typical ride is 25 - 30 miles with 1500 to 2000 ft 2 or 3 times per week and a weekend ride of 50 mi and 4000 to 6000. So, I don't always hit the 10/1000 goal... I like the data from my Garmin, and have a hard time riding without it

terrymorse 

Year to date is 1202 miles with 60,486 feet climbing, or 50 feet per mile.

But I only started doing climbs a few weeks ago, recent rides are closer to 90 feet per mile.

calamarichris

So it begins... (What took you so long, Frisco? )

TrojanHorse

Climbing in NoCal doesn't count - this is the SoCal forum.

Gallo

That sound like me

pretty tough and no love

did not realize I am a fat ass, I am going to my room to cry

alicestrong

Short and flat...kind of like me...

bitingduck

How much climbing you do on your regular, routine ride is probably mostly a function of where you live and what you like. When I lived in the minnesota, more than a few hundred feet over any distance was unusual. If I'm riding the track, then you can add up the amount of distance I go up and down track over a few hours and find that it's non-zero, but not all that much, either. Riding GMR or the Angeles Crest it's almost all up until it's almost all down. And the SGRT is pretty flat with whatever the gain is from the beach to Duarte (with a dam in the middle...).

As for Strava? Meh. I haven't even had a computer on my bike for 5 years or so (including a few years when I was still racing). The sensor broke on the one I had and I never got around to replacing it. I found that not only did I not miss it, but I that it's just a distraction that doesn't add anything for me. If I really want to know the elevation and distance I'll go map what I did on map my ride, but for the most part I don't really care, and I enjoy just going out to ride. And fwiw, I've never used any sort of computer on the track, which is where I've done most of my racing (and a ton of training for track racing), even when I got to a pretty high level.

calamarichris

Careful. We Southern Californians are pretty sensitive about judgmental statements like that.

TJClay

It also seems there is a lot of variance in how websites compute their elevation......seems ride with gps is always way over what my Garmin says, usually about 30-40% more.

TrojanHorse

ridewithGPS is famous for overstating elevation gains and I think 30-40 is a good approximation. I think it adds up all the elevation gains from riding on each chip in chip seal.

terrymorse 

Oops, then I revise my statement to zero miles with zero feet of climbing.

Where's the Norcal/SoCal border?