BTW, I accidentally posted this same thread in foo. Feel free to delete/ignore this one, that one, both, or neither.

So, in my quest to describe my rides to friends and family members in different states, I've became caught up in terminology. How do you quantify how hilly a ride was, or how much effort was given during a ride? I've recently been using strava, and I like it a lot. I don't have a premium account, so I can't use the suffer score, nor do I have a computer. I use the strava app, so I can see splits, climbs, segments, ect...

Questions:

How hilly would you rate this ride? https://app.strava.com/rides/9242348
Arbitrary scale of 0-5

How accurate would you say the power column is? It seems very high, but I don't have a meter of any sorts to measure with.

5. I figure 1000' of vertical for every 10 miles is very hilly.

I average 400 meters of elevation on my normal rides. I'd have to do hill repeats to get 1200 meters in this area.

Power on strava is way overestimated. I rode with two friends today and I'm the only one with a meter. I averaged 191w over 102 km while their estimated power was 215w and 221w

I looks hilly to me.

I'm pretty sure elevation gain is over estimated on Strava too. I usually subtract 25 to 35%.

OP I'd give that ride a 4. Looks pretty dang hilly to me.

Looking at the grades on the route, some areas are pretty steep, I give it a 6. Decent average speed, nice ride.

3 or 4.

I would give it a 4. Plenty of small rollers with a few hard climbs thrown in just for fun. Looks like a fun ride.

I'd give it a 3 or 4 as well. It is hilly. But, it's only 37 miles. Stretch it out into 100 miles: that'd be a 5 (and 10,000 feet!!).

gadabout007: Not to say that Strava's power estimates are accurate or anything, but perhaps your friends weigh a little more than you? That would explain the difference in power output: they had to put out more watts just to ride with you.

That's my scale too. But I'd call it a 4. There are worse hills ... though I don't plan to ride them any time soon!

That's not what I've found. I've measured Strava's elevations against official topographical maps, and found it to be very accurate, and far better than Garmin.

4000 ft under 40 miles equals 4 in my eyes/legs. 5 being toughest.

I'd probably give it a 3/5... also use the 1000' / 10 miles as a threshold, to determine if it's moderately hilly, or not.

Its undulating, nothing more than a cat 4 climb so I wouldnt say it was hilly particularly but it looks like it could be as tough as you want to make it depending on speed. Strava power figures are generally way off but can sometimes be accurate. The wind plays too big a part. I have segments that my powertap has shown my fastest time was not by any means my highest power - strava cant compute that.

"I figure 1000' of vertical for every 10 miles is very hilly."

1400 feet of gain in six miles of climbing this afternoon - no wonder I'm tired.

I live in the french alps and for the rides around here, I'd give it a 3. That is, about an average ride. It works out to 20 meters per kilometer or 4% average gradient (assuming half the distance is climbing the other half descending, as there's not much flat on your route).

A hilly route over one or two cat 1 climbs is typically about 3000 meters climbing for 100 kilometers, i.e. 30 meters/kilometer or 6% average gradient.

Thanks for all the input guys! It's giving me a good gauge. It was a fun ride indeed! The hills aren't as bad as I thought they would be, just chugged up em.

It makes me wonder though - What does a cat 1 or HC climb feel like? Anyone care to share?

This one hurt but I did it yesterday. I am the slowest climber in the world.

https://app.strava.com/rides/9487701

Depends on how fast you go. Today I did a 102km ride with 2151m of climbing (about 63 miles with 7000 ft of climbing). There were 4 cols, each was about a cat 3. That is, about 400m (1300ft) of elevation gain over 6 or 7km (4 miles), for an average gradient 6%. Average speed going up was 18 kmph (11 mph), and was relatively easy. I did the ride before lunch and didn't bother with bringing any food, other than one of my water bottles was a 50% mix of water and orange juice.

A cat 1 is harder, of course. About 800 to 1500m of elevation gain with an average gradient of around 8%. HC generally has 1500+ meters of climbing with lots of sections above 10% (by "section", I mean at least a 1km stretch, not some short pitch of road). On these climbs, I eventually get cooked. 10km of climbing at 10% grade is MUCH harder than ten 100m rollers even if they have the same gradient. It's the lack of any rest that eventually wears you down.

It's hilly, but there are hillier rides. I'd say this one is about a 3 out of 5. Do the same elevation gain in 17 miles, and it'll be a 4.

depends on who you ask. here in the mountains I usually average about 100 ft. of climbing per mile, so I'd say your ride was average. that being said our ride are very hilly.

In the Alps, "A hilly route over one or two cat 1 climbs is typically about 3000 meters climbing for 100 kilometers."

I'm not able to think metric easily. That's about 10,000 feet in 60 miles? Stage 20 of the Giro d'Italia included about 130 miles and 20,000 feet of riding. Ouch!

Of the organized 100 mile rides I've been on, 5,000 feet in 100 miles would be typical, or about 16500 meters and 160 kilometers.

I configured my ride of a couple of days ago in the Santa Monica Mountains. After a flat three mile warm-up, I rode 1400 feet in six up and down miles, before heading for the flatlands.

That works out to, I think, about 23,000+ feet in 100 miles (if I could actually keep going that long). Or for a metric century, 4700 meters in 100 kilometers.

Actually, I've kept that pace for 5,000 non-stop feet of climbing in 21 miles. THAT's hilly.

2.5-3, none of those climbs are that bad, They are more like long kickers than actual climbs.

This is the ride I did today: https://app.strava.com/rides/9572362#
Mostly flat, but with one tough climb, this is one of my "flatter" rides. I would give it something around 3 on the climbing.


And then I would give this ride a 5:https://app.strava.com/rides/5675976
I guess you could say that this is the benchmark for how I am rating the climbing.

Yep, that's hilly.

Hilly, yes. Mountainous, no.

3.5/5 or just round up to 4