Originally Posted by greaterbrown

You tell me. I don't think there is any more frustrating topic then attempting to describe the difficulty of a ride. Just so you realize, bikely gave the elevation on the Charm and Grace ride as 4200 total. Wow! That is less than half of what NR's total was. So you tell me- was the ride a 4200 foot ride? (low climbing for a century) or was it a 9500 foot ride? (lots of climbing for a century)

Not sure how NR plugged in the roughed out 2nd half of my ride, but it is not giving any elevation data. Bikely gives the first 40 miles as 2800 feet. It felt very "medium" to me when I rode it, but I don't have the slightest idea of how that translates.

The more I talk in circles about this, the more I convince myself to change to "easy", "moderate" and "hard" and that's it.

Originally Posted by balto charlie

That's how I always describe a route easy, moderate or hard. I think you were right about it being a moderate ride. I saw NRs twitter/blog @ over 9K and was surprised. I'm starting to think that the elevation results in Bikely & GPS are mostly poor estimates. When I rate climbs to other climbers I just compare them to similar climbs and state easy, medium or hard. Climbing is rated to death(and purely subjective)...5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.10A...5.10D.....5.14+ and so on. You don't want to go there.