Pardon if this is a dumb question - bit of a noob. This is only my second season with a road bike, and my first season of serious organized rides.

Is 1050 feet of climbing in 18 miles a lot? I know it's all relative, but is that considered easy, medium, hard? Just trying to get a sense of how much pain I might be in for.

if it all comes at once, it's pretty decent.

kinda tough to give a determination based on such little information.

generally though 1k feet over 18 miles isn't a lot.

It's an average grade of about 1%. If it's constant over 18 miles, you'll hardly notice it.

If it's one long climb, it's a pretty easy one. Although 18 miles of 1% grade would get pretty boring. 18 miles with lots of 100 foot climbs might be kind of fun - still well below medium difficulty though.

nope

1,000 ft in 18 miles is easy, if I go west from here it's 1100 ft in 5 miles and that's considered a moderate climb.

i start to think of rides as "hilly" when you have at least 300m gain over 16km or so (aka >1000ft of gain per 10mi)

even then, if that was a straight climb it wouldn't be worth much. for something like a pass, you can be gaining something like 2000ft per 10miles. (3.8% grade)

Wouldn't even qualify as a false flat.

Depends on where you live.

Yep, that's pretty much my commute to work. 15 miles with 900' most of the time at 1%, then a 5 mile descent to lose the 900' and then some. Coming back home is a good workout.

But yeah, it's a lot for some and not a lot for others.

I don't get that much absolute elevation here, but that is not very steep at all if at constant grade: 1050 ft for (5280 x 18ft) 95,040 ft.

my rule of thumb for ft of climb/mi.

0-30 = flat
31-50 = rolling
50-75 = hilly
76-100 = mountainous
100+ = epic

your route comes in at ~60 ft climb/mi, so i'd call it "hilly"

As others have said, it depends on how it comes at you. I'd say it's "rolling" at best. It also depends on how you arrived at that number. If it was from a mapping site you likely need to cut it in half.

That's probably about right for east coast rides. On the west coast, the scale is more like:

0-50 = flat
50-75 = rolling
76-100 = hilly
100+ = mountainous

These are feet of climbing per mile of riding, averaged over an entire loop ride (not just the uphills).

So....you finally proved that there are no epic rides in california......nice.

I live in central ma and most of the loops I do have 1000 feet of climbing every 10 miles.

That's the scale I've usually seen people go by. Although sometimes for longer rides it's hard to go by the whole averages. I mean I leave my house and do ~10 rolling miles to meet a group, then we ride along the coast for a while, go over some mountain passes, ride back along the coast and then I take a flattish route home... so the whole thing may be 5,000 feet in 80 miles but I'd say it's more than rolling because it's all at once... On the other hand I did 4,000 feet in 37 miles in the foothills yesterday but never had a single climb that was more than 500 feet and the whole thing topped out at 1,000 so I'd hardly call it mountainous. IMO they are both "hilly" rides.

Epic is 200 ft/mile

so, who has tougher hills; east coast or west?

discuss.

west = longer

east = short and steep

At the top of Flagstaff Road, (just West of Boulder), there is 1000' of elevation gain in 1.5 miles.
That is what I call "a lot".

I might as well take the troll bait.

Mt Washington is probably the sickest climb in the USA and it is in New Hampshire.

nice, sounds like fun.

out in the seattle area, Cougar Mtn is the best we've got in terms of sheer gain: ~1,500 ft over 2.5 miles. 7% grade overall, but there are some nice 20%+ grades in there too.

and cayuse pass out near mt. rainier is fun too, ~8% for 8 miles or so.. good times.

then there's something like blewett pass, 20 miles at 4-5%.. not too steep but for long of a distance, it wears on you.

Ok - cool. Fear level greatly reduced. I know that it's not all one steady climb ... a longish not steep initial ascent followed by a steeper shorter climb. From what you all have commented, even that shouldn't be too taxing. I'm actually not a bad climber, I just have no idea how to think / talk about climbing in math terms, so didn't know what to do with the data I was given.

As always, thanks tons for the help!

Nope