Distance and Total Ascent

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
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Mick F
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Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Mick F »

Ride yesterday was (only) 46miles, but there was 5,250ft of ascent.
That's 114ft per mile. :shock:
I've done quite a few rides of over 110ft per mile, but always much shorter.

Riding to Okehampton with the Wimps in 2018, I rode out to meet them, and then back home from Okehampton. That was 75miles but only 6,000ft of ascent = only 80ft of climbing = a walk in the park!

This means, that for any given ride, "Difficulty" is a figure which is distance AND ascent.

Is there a mathematical way of putting it so rides can be compared?
Mick F. Cornwall
pwa
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by pwa »

Total ascent does not equate exactly with difficulty. This is one of my rides:

https://cycle.travel/map/journey/154446

1000m (3200ft?) in 52 miles. Sounds simple. But look at the profile and you see a good chunk of that is in one climb from about 10m upto about 530m, with most of the rest distributed in small, inconsequential climbs. Twenty minutes of sweat dripping off the end of the nose, but hours of easier stuff for the rest of the ride. And there is one section in there where the gradient goes up to over 14%, but that is two minutes of suffering amid hours of easy riding.

For me, the most difficult rides are the ones where five or ten minute climbs come at you, one after another, with only a short recovery time in between. Downhills pass quickly so you can end up spending most of your time grinding away in a low gear. By reputation Devon and Cornwall are well supplied with that sort of riding. Mick F needs to move somewhere easier. Like Wales.
Last edited by pwa on 31 May 2020, 11:20am, edited 3 times in total.
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Audax67
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Audax67 »

Percentage: 100 x total climb / total distance. Standard club run is 1% = 10 metres/kilometre, 100k ride has total climb = 1km = 1000 metres. In our neck of the woods you usually do the 1000 metres in the middle 30k of the ride and the rest is getting to the mountains and riding back to the start.

Paris-Nice is generally around 4%, which is pretty high on the ouch scale.
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Mike Sales »

When I lived in Gwynedd non-cyclists would often say that Ynys Mon was flat compared to the mountains.
I felt that riding over the island's many corrugations could involve just as much climbing as the mountain passes inland.
Up and down, up and down, up and down instead of one long climb and descent.
It certainly needs more skill to keep in the most economical gear and cadence on the frequent changes of gradient.
No settling down to a nice steady rhythm.
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Mick F
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Mick F »

If you had a ride of 50miles and 25 of them were up the hill, and the other 25 were down the hill, it would be a much easier ride than the same total ascent over many many hills.

That was mine yesterday. Constant battle with the gears, and the brakes.
Like Mike says, "No settling down to a nice steady rhythm."

Just remembering my ride in the West of Scotland over to Applecross over the Bealach na Ba.
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The climb up to the pass summit was far easier than all the rest of the ride along the coast back to Lochcarron. Knowing what I know now about how tired I was, was that I should have just turned back and gone over the top again! :lol:

There's more to this than total ascent then.
Mick F. Cornwall
JakobW
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by JakobW »

Presumably if you had power data for two differing rides (whether measured or estimated), if would show the effects of not being able to get into a rhythm? My guess is that you could probably built a reasonable model using VAM/km and the rate of change of gradient per km.
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by whoof »

I've ridden 60km in the Netherlands without going up a single hill on a sit up and beg into a howling head wind and it was far harder than any 60 km I could ever do in Cornwall. There's more to difficult riding than climbing.
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Mike Sales »

whoof wrote:I've ridden 60km in the Netherlands without going up a single hill on a sit up and beg into a howling head wind and it was far harder than any 60 km I could ever do in Cornwall. There's more to difficult riding than climbing.


It was like a 60Km hill, I suppose. At what gradient?
I now live in the Fens, so I agree.
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by iandriver »

How Audax UK work out climbing points is explained here roughly https://audax.uk/awards-pages/audax-alt ... aaa-points

Totaly agree totoal assent is far from the be all and end all. I remember parts of the climbs on the Strada Bianchi ,10% plus climb, break neck descent then 10% climb again. Was shattering, harder than assending Venteux.
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by peetee »

I have just done 35 miles around Helston and Falmouth area and it was one of the hardest I’ve done. Trying to keep a comfortably fast pace on constantly undulating, twisting, turning, sometimes narrow roads with occasional exposed gusty sections was a real test of anticipation skills and accurate gear selection.
I was finding some climbs really difficult if I had freewheeled down the previous descent as the build-up of lactic acid in my legs made them very reluctant to put the work in.
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by simonineaston »

Is there a mathematical way of putting it so rides can be compared?
What you're asking reminds me of Naismith's Rule, along with Tranter's Variations, (I kid you not...!) which is a way of taking into account height gained & lost when calculating times, for walking routes. I should imagine that they are included in online route algorythms - if Rick F is reading, he may comment...
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by rmurphy195 »

Mick F wrote:Ride yesterday was (only) 46miles, but there was 5,250ft of ascent.
That's 114ft per mile. :shock:
I've done quite a few rides of over 110ft per mile, but always much shorter.

Riding to Okehampton with the Wimps in 2018, I rode out to meet them, and then back home from Okehampton. That was 75miles but only 6,000ft of ascent = only 80ft of climbing = a walk in the park!

This means, that for any given ride, "Difficulty" is a figure which is distance AND ascent.

Is there a mathematical way of putting it so rides can be compared?


Doesn't that put you in the mile high club (almost)?
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Jay Gee
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Jay Gee »

My own version of Naismith's rule: 2 mins per km and 8 mins per 100m of ascent. I calculated this from history of my rides over a variety of terrain. Obviously it's not going to be a perfect predictor, but I've found it a helpful guide when I have to be somewhere at a certain time and the route is new to me.
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Mick F
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by Mick F »

peetee wrote:I have just done 35 miles around Helston and Falmouth area .........
On my parish churches quest, I did a ride in the Falmouth area. Very hard work indeed.

We drove down there and Mrs Mick F and the dog walked along the coast path. I did ten parish churches that day.
28miles and 3,300ft of ascent = 117ft per mile.
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Naismith's Rule has merit but doesn't that just tell you the time it'll take you, rather than the energy expenditure?
Also, it adds time for climbs, but not descents. I can walk faster up hills than down them coz it hurts my legs and knees coming down. Always has done, even as a young man.
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: Distance and Total Ascent

Post by al_yrpal »

I get that knee trouble descending too. I did a 10 day pretty full on cycle tour of the Outer Hebrides and when we got back to my friends house at Rhu he suggested a jaunt up Ben Lomond the hard way. We both did it with ease, but.... coming down the 'tourist' track I almost never made it. Very quickly the knee pain became excruciating. I had to try to relieve it by various methods,...walking backwards, running, resting frequently, it was a nightmare. I dont know if we have any hill walkers here? Does descending knee pain get less and eventually disappear as you walk in the hills more frequently?

Al
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