Originally Posted by
spelger
of course, all my rides start and end at the same place. but that is not really what this thread is about, although the title is misleading. but i think you already know that.
Well, I'm not sure what you're getting at. This statement has me confused:
Originally Posted by
spelger
i still question the usefulness of this metric. i often read that 100 ft/mi is some sort of benchmark. but that is not quite a 2% grade. i doubt most here are riding 2% grades from start to finish. most of mine are 5+%. maybe a better metric would be average grade for distances with grades > 0%?
100ft/mi is a benchmark (albeit arbitrary), yes...And it's an average. A typical ride with that ratio of climbing might have few (or no) passages that are exactly 2% grade. If you calculate the average grade of ONLY sections that have grades >0%, then you might do a rather flat fifty mile ride which includes only one short stretch of 5% climbing -- which says very little about the climbing (or difficulty) of the ride in its entirety.
Of course, not all 100ft/mi rides are equal, either: I've done some of the biggest hill climb races in Colorado, which involve far more than 100ft/mi -- some over double that ratio. And yet, some races out in WV and PA which have around 100ft/mi (give or take) were waaaay harder, because the climbs were steeper (albeit shorter, and with descents). Much harder to modulate your aerobic effort.
Originally Posted by
spelger
yes, i agree, very unlikely without to compute in your head or with a simple calculation. piece of cake with a small program though. spreadsheet...? yeah, no way.
Again, I know of no program for doing this...But yeah. Spreadsheets are useful, but they won't do
that.