Elevation "gain" is not interpreted by any cycling app or device go be elevation "net"

Sometimes I wish I could. Seriously. Just meet me at the top, drive me back to my car.

Same here. I'm also in Houston. The only hill is the Fred Hartman Bridge.

Stop bragging

Here in the Low Country, I do make it above sea level when I ride over I-95.

Most of my 20 to 30 mile rides have 1000-1200 ft of elevation gain. I did one last Saturday that had 1000' in 3 miles, brutal.

Around where I live, an average ride is 400-700 ft per 10 miles. You'd have to go out of your way to intentionally ride bike paths and out and back roads to ride flatter routes.

I ride in Marin county which is across the Golden Gate from San Francisco.

It's a low mileage year for me but this year, according to Strava I'm at 1,514 miles/129,475 ft. That's 86' per mile.

All hail the mighty Strava.

So far this month in the distance challenge: 247,394 riders have ridden a total of 116,947,484 km (472.71km or 293.73 miles per rider)

In the elevation challenge: 193,766 riders have climbed a total of 1,206,966,819 metres (6,228.99m or 20,436.35 ft per rider).

This works out to an average of 13.177 metres gained per km or 69.57 ft per mile.

So for a 20 mile ride the average elevation gain for all strava riders would be 1391.5 ft so you're a bit under that figure.

Now, how accurate is the elevation gains on Strava? Good question.

For fun, my average gain per mile this year is 72.60 ft and this is using a Garmin 500 GPS with altimeter data.

From the 2013 "Annual Pissing Contest" thread, so perhaps the higher mileage riders were more likely to report.

There's only one ride I do around here that's really hilly



The steepest reading for the hill in Strava is 32.4%, so it works pretty good on that one. Some segments over bridges get really weird, however.

California is amazing for climbing. I do not understand why would you get into cycling if you do not do climbs. Flats are the boring parts in between the ascents/descents.

So far this year: 58'/mile

but most local rides are 60'- 80'/mile

First ... I do this calculation:

Metres of climbing/Kilometres of riding distance in metres * 100 to determine the difficulty level of a ride.

So for example, the ride we've got planned on the weekend has about 700 metres of climbing over 100 km. That's (700/100,000)*100 = 0.7

The century we did a couple weekends ago had about 1700 metres of climbing over 165 km. That's (1700/165,000)*100 = 1.03


And then I rank those numbers.

... if a ride is less than 0.5 ... it is a flat ride.
... if a ride is less than 1 ... it is a little bit hilly, but doable.
... if a ride is less than 1.5 ... it is a hilly ride and will be a bit of a struggle, but I can manage it. Just.
... if a ride is over 1.5 ... it's too hilly for me right now.

Most of our rides are somewhere around 1. It's challenging finding rides in this area that come in much less than that ... takes a bit of strategic planning to avoid the hills.


This calculation and rating system says nothing about the steepness of a particular hill or the distribution of the hills. For me, this just indicates whether or not I can do a ride within the 15 km/h time limit on randonnees.

As far as individual hills goes ... if it is under 10%, it's fine. I can do that without too much effort. If it is over 10%, it starts to become a struggle.



Second, regarding Strava ... I map the route using Google Maps and it comes up with an elevation number. Then we ride it and Strava comes up with an elevation number that is considerably higher. There's a chance the Google number is low. There's a chance the Strava number is high. The real number is likely somewhere in between.


Third, using the calculation above ... 20 miles is 32 km. 800 feet is 243 metres.
(243/32,000)*100 = 0.76

Google's numbers are a bit high. Strava numbers are a lot high.

I go off baro-based altim from the Garmin that gets written by strava.

So when I'm using strava to map a ride intending for 800m gain, ill map until it shows 1200m.

Same here. And, most of our club rides are around 40-50 miles with 2400-3000 ft. of climbing.

.

Nice summary, but for folks who enter challenges, not so much a representative sample of all recreational cyclists, or even all Strava users.

For my part, VeloViewer has averages broken down by bike, which is kind of interesting.
"n/a," which is actually my first bike, shows averages of 19.9 miles with 440' gained, or about 22'/mile. I spent a lot of time on the Hudson River Greenway.
Once I got another bike and differentiated between the two, on the same bike it shows averages of 17 miles with 685', or 40.3'/mile, so rides got considerably "climby-er"
The FG bike shows a 32'/mile average.
On the "gran fondo" bike, days are often split, with rides to start and home from finish usually recorded separately, sometimes first and second half recorded separately, so the average distance is fairly short at about 24 miles, with an average elevation gain of 1305', so overall, 54.6'/mile average.

Edit/add for some VeloViewer bragstats:

Best month so far was May of last year: average elevation gain of 102'/mile, which included a day with 12,000' gained (incl. Passo Daone and Madonna di Campiglio), and another ride that averaged a massive 524'/mile for 12 1/2 miles (Cima Grappa), or a 9.9 on the Machka scale.

Here in the East Bay, about 80-90 ft. per mile or if riding in the Sierras, about 100 ft. per mile. When I lived in Sacramento, about 10 ft. per mile.

I'll care about this when I can get a strava device with rtk.

3 ft. per mile on my standard training route. https://www.strava.com/activities/661057388

July 2016
13 rides
289 miles
15,125 ft

avg 22.2 mi/ride
avg 1,163.5 ft/ride
avg 52.4 ft/mi

86'/mi so far this year.

I don't use Veloviewer, but, yes, if you are simply reading total miles and total "elevation" or "vertical," then, only 1/2 of that is climbing. However, I don't believe most (all) other posters on this thread are confused about it. Strava, ridewithpgs, mapmyride, etc. are able to state routes as distance and +/- vertical; e.g. my ride last Saturday: 66.2 miles; +5817'/-5816' (small statistical error.) For that route, I climbed 5,817'/66.2 miles = 88'/mile.

strava stats 2016

mean and median ride almost exactly 60km/600hm = 53ft/mile
including zwift rides bumps up to 55ft/mile

Staying on the valley floor for sure. Almost no gain. I'd usually get on at Watt and ride to Folsom Lake, getting a steady little pull up to around 400 ft, then down to Discovery and back. Add in another 100 of rollers and that's about all I could eek out of a 50-60 miler.