AngryScientist 

on a scale of 1 - 10, 10 being most difficult.

silversx80

All climbs are a 1 if you have the right gearing

merlinextraligh

If I'm reading the graph correctly, we're talking less than 400 vertical feet in about 10 miles. Even by Florida standards we'd call that a false flat, not a climb.

Quel

I assume he's talking about the climb in the middle. 480ish feet in 1.5 miles. That's a 6% grade.

Hammertoe

I see 450+ feet in 1 mile...

Or am I reading it wrong...

AngryScientist 

yea thats basically what i'm referring to, i did the above 13ish miles as a loop, and i really tried to kill that middle climb, as sort of interval training, with the rest of the lap being rest time more or less.

it certainly kicked my butt, though i realize a lot of you ladies and gents consider that 1.5 miles laughable, hence the "rate the climb" question

umd

Assuming that he just means the 500 foot lump in the middle, I'd rate it about a 4 or 5. It is reasonably steep on average (my my figuring about 10%) but it is short (about 500 feet over a mile). If it was only for that I'd give it a 3 but it looks like there are several pitches over 20%. The spike in the grade up to 40 seems like it is probably most likely an error in the data... I've seen glitches like that I know aren't real. When the samples are close together because you are going slowly it doesn't take much error in the elevation readings to cause a huge spike.

AngryScientist 

i concur that that spike in the grade plot is probably erroneous.

i know a bunch of us have equipment that plots data in this fashion, but i hardly ever see this stuff show up in ride report threads, it would be nice to see the data.

maybe we should have a thread dedicated to ride reports with accompanying data plots? surely thats as exciting to look at as stock cervelo pics...

botto 

sure.

merlinextraligh

Ok, I get it now. I was looking at the bottom scale as 50 miles, 60 miles etc. Didn't realize it was 5.0 miles, 6.0 miles.

johnny99

Not long. Not steep. In some areas, anything less than 500 feet is considered a roller, not a hill. If you ride it regularly, it should become easy for you pretty quickly.

johnny99

Only true for short climbs. Even with "the right gearing", a 10,000 foot climb still requires a lot of energy.

silversx80

Well, technically

reef58

500 feet in a mile is about 10%, but it is only a mile. On a 1-10 scaled I would give it a 3 stand alone, but if you have 50 miles in before you hit it I give it a 5.

Richard

timeedgevxr

Garmins SUCK for stuff like this - my 305 spikes all over the place just like this - its garbage. According to the graph, he's hitting 20%+ grades - and its clearly an out-n-back and look how asymetrical it is.

If its really a 400' climb in a mile or so, that's probably a light Cat3 climb ... as for scaling 1-10, that depends on you. For someone who lives in the mountains, that ride is a walk in the park. For a flatlander running TT gearing, it might be a 10. Considering what's out there, this climb is easier than it is harder.

dvmarshall11

agree. if the garmin doesn't have an altimeter then the elevation readings are useless. sporttracks with the elevation correction plugin ftw. out and backs are mirror images, as they should.

Innes

I give it a 8.

Copperhed51

I dunno, I live in Kansas and I consider that moderately difficult...maybe a 6. Did a climb fairly similar to that recently at pretty much a race pace for me. It hurt but if I was just cruising it would have been no problem.

trekkster

less than three if you did four loops.

umd

It's a loop not an out and back. The altimeter is not garbage, it's just about the interpretation. You can't look at the grade between just a few data points, the data us too noisy.

timeedgevxr

Yes, the data is VERY noisy ...and as for the loop, it could have fooled me - those undulations are pretty close and the peak is dead center. The 3 high points on either side of the peak are the same height and almost identical distance apart. I do lots of out-n-backs and my Garmin shows the same jumbled mess.

Really - other than having this pretty graph to look at, the info is inaccurate in its entirety - to me, that's useless. Would you be OK if your HRM or wired computer were off by that much? I know I wouldn't. I've run with my Garmin and my Cateye on MANY occasions and they're never close - usually off by 10%.

Maybe its just my Garmin, but about the only thing accurate on it is the clock.

rOOster14

so what you are saying is that i wasnt actually going 1749mph last week according to my garmin?

superdex

oh tree or four

rallison

The grade graph is plenty noisy and I generally just ignore that. However, the elevation data, especially taken over the whole climb, is much less noisy and far from useless. Is there noise in the data? Absolutely. Is there useful information that you can use despite the noise? Also, absolutely. Basically, what umd said.

timeedgevxr

I'm really not trying to pick this apart, I own a Garmin and I check out the graphs a lot, but as far as using it to train off of - I quit that long ago. What about this is useful? ... If I were to ask what the max gradient was, you couldn't tell me? ...according to the graph, he hit or exceeded 20% almost EIGHT TIMES going up and THREE times going down!! I call BS - that does nothing? I'm still not convinced this is a loop either, and the total elevation could be off by 100' or more. Outside of that - there's really not much there.

I do a regular 30 mile out-n-back ride from my doorstep that I know for a fact is 2200' because my company surveyed the road. My Garmin shows a graph that looks close to the actual road contour, but it never says less than 5000' total climbed and its been as high as 6500' - granted, this is all because of the noise in the graph, but if I didn't know the true grades and elevations, I'd have no way of knowing the actual data from the Garmin - hence its useless.

Seriously - what's the benefit - I'm open minded on this one I swear