coasting 

This is my route tomorrow. Compared to your route would it be considered hilly?

https://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united...ndon/676606973

I'll take some pics tomorrow

coasting 

Forgot to mention why I'm asking. I was wondering if I am particularly bad at climbing or is it just the route that lowers my average speed relative to what I've seen people post on BF.

(51)

Compared to mine? Hell ya! I have 20 feet of elevation change on my entire 25 mile ride. I live 20' above sea level, and it is all downhill from there to the beach

bdinger

I'd say so. The route I consider "leg torture", here:

https://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united...coln/677003749

Over that route I averaged around 17-18mph, BUT it's all highway... aka no stopping. If I would have had to stop, there'd be no way.

Tom Stormcrowe

Nice little roller route! Worst hill I have is a short little 18% grade. It's not tall but it's STEEP, rise of 300 feet in 1600 feet traveled.

BeckyW

That looks a lot like where I've been riding, as far as hills go. I've wondered the same thing, about whether it's something others would consider hilly, or if it's just me. I'd say it's definitely at least rolling hills. I'm sure it's all relative - on a local bike forum, someone actually referred to this route as "fairly flat!" With over 1000 ft of ascent, it definitely isn't FLAT!! Makes me scared to ride with them.

FWIW, Cyclostats qualifies my rides as rolling to hilly, depending where I go, and that one I posted above would be "mountainous."

chipcom 

I'd consider that route more rolling than hilly. It may be hilly to you now, but as your riding fitness improves you'll consider it rolling too.

Caincando1

Okay someone check my math.

I pulled the raw data for this route and assessed the biggest climb that comes between 8 and 19 miles. The raw data showed the lowest elevation of 1274.84 at 8.04 miles and a highest of 1808.21 at 19.28 miles. This make for 533.37 feet of elevation change in 59347.2 feet(11.24 miles). This works out to a .89% grade so a little less than 1%. does this sound right?

Edit: I'll add that the steepest climb between 4.68 miles and 6.48 miles works out to a 4.1% grade.

superdex

my commute: https://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united...eton/677334475

Pinyon

Hills, hills, hills. They really kick my butt, and there are so many around here too. You just have to get used to riding them. Here is a hill route that I did yesterday on the way to work (https://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united...lins/677480715).

With a bathroom break and redlights, I averaged 16.9 mph. Not bad at all for me. It did not hurt that the hills tended to be short distance-wise, that there were plenty of downhills, and that the second half of the ride was mostly flat-rolling.

MikeR

What is the Climb in feet per mile?

The general clasification is:
Flat is < 50 feet of climb per mile
Hilly is < 85 feet of climb per mile
Verry Hilly is < 100 feet of climb per mile
Mountainous is > 100 feet of climb per mile

Around here most of my rides are 70 to 90 fpm.
My commute is only 4.5 miles but it is over 90 fpm

And yes, I am a LOT slower than when on the flat. When I ride a flat route my speed increases 2 to 3 mph.

ronjon10

I use this formula to determine how hilly a ride is. (#Feet/100)/Miles So, a 10 mile ride with 500 feet of climbing comes out to (500/100)/10 = .5

My scale goes something like:

0 - .3 = pancake flat
.3-.5 = rolling hills (or maybe one steep climb and otherwise flat)
.5 - .7 = hilly ride
.7 - .9 = climbing ride
> .9 = torturous fun

It's not perfect, but I find it works pretty well for me.


edit...

hahaha, looks like MikeR and I are on the same page

BeckyW

How do you count feet of climbing? Total elevation gain, or total going up? (example: Up 50 ft, then down 50 ft, then up 50 ft. 50 ft of climbing, or 100 ft of climbing?)

superdex

well you went up both sections of 50', right? that's 100' of climbing

v1k1ng1001

I'm now in North Dakota and all of the rides are totally flat so yours would be considered hilly. On the other hand, compared to my rides in Pennsylvania, your ride is not very hilly.

coasting 

Oh no! My legs say it's hilly but it's only rolling. Maybe I should move to florida and do that 20 ft mountain.

How do you measure the amount of climbing? If in Becky's example you need to measure each 50 ft, is there some kind of tool in map my ride?

Terrierman

Bikely.com is much more climbing data friendly. It will give you a ride profile, total climbing and total descent. I'd call that route rolling hills, far from brutal.

Tom Stormcrowe

If you move to Fla you 'll be doing your hill intervals riding over bridges.

Pinyon

I thought that my hills were pretty hard too, until I looked at those formulas. I can't think of a place near my house where I could climb that high (more than say 1500 ft) without riding so far, that the formulas indicate that it is just "rolling". Granted, most of the slopes around here are pretty gentle, with respect to percent slope, compared to some places. Do you guys find places to ride uphill, where you don't ride back down again, and essentially double your distance?

For instance, most of the climbing on the route that I did yesterday takes place within a contiguous 12-mile section, and it comes out to be about a 1.16 with that formula. But the entire ride is 54 miles, and scores out at about a 0.25. Hmmm...that 12-mile section defined the ride as hilly for me.

Redhouse

Is there another site that does the same thing? Map my ride is missing everything around here, it's just has the main roads and no image of my house or land.

mongo

I'd call that quite hilly. I've actually spent quite a bit of time in that area (I used to work with a company in Stevenage), and the hills tend to roll nicely.

I like the route -- gets you to Old Knebworth for lunch at the Lytton Arms, which is one of my favorite pubs ...

Why worry about speed? Enjoy the ride!

Tom Stormcrowe

Gmaps Pedometer does an elevation and terrain graph, but it's still Googlew Map mdriven and some areas have better resolution than others.

ronjon10

I don't tend to do a lot of rides like you describe. . I usually go long and flat endurance rides without any climbs or I climb climb climb climb climb. When I do though, I still don't classify the ride as a hilly ride.

To get the > 100 feet / mile ratio, I wind up doing 50 - 60 miles with 5000-6000 feet of climbing, which yes, means +5000 feet in 20-25 miles. I live in the mountains around Los Angeles (Santa Monica Mountains). Any ride that leaves from my house is a minimum of 1000 feet of climbing since I either go down to the bottom of the mountain and climb back up, or climb to the top of the mountain and come back down.

Before I moved to my place now, I wasn't able to do these sorts of rides. You condition yourself to your surroundings. I can climb (slowly mind you), but I can't ride in humidity. I also don't ride for high average speeds since I don't get many flat speed rides as I use hills to push myself. I can ride in the wind since I find it fairly similar to climbing.

Mr. Beanz

OK Ronjon, how do you rate GMR (nearly 5,000 in 21 miles),Breathless Agony (12,000 in 74 miles), and Ride the Bear (nearly10,000ft in 62 miles)?..I'm missing something in the fomula. I'm getting numbers all over the place.

a bit racialist

try routeslip.com, seems like it works out okay.

my ride to work is a 5.5, kind of more than i expected it to be