Originally Posted by Beaker

I was asking to see if you had an opinion/preference between the two rides. I suspect that there's not a straightforward answer to your original question as accuracy will depend on weather, terrain, gps quality, and then who can say definitvely what the actual elevation gain is for a given ride anyway? The one number that I somewhat keep note of is the total elevation for each ride from my edge 500 at the end of the ride. To be honest, it matters less to me now than it used, every piece of software spits out a different number - whether it's Garmin connect, Sporttracks, Strava, Ridewithgps, Golden Cheetah etc. They rarely match the measured feet climbed from the device. I just prefer to stick with a number that is a measure based upon a property that is directly related to elevation (atmospheric pressure) rather than an extrapolation. I accept the inaccuracy in the number but use the same method each time.

Of course the main exception to the above is when posting to BF, in which case you should use the method that gives you the biggest number.