Is this a hilly route?

tvi_82

Is this a hilly route or more bumpy? The reason i ask is because i want to get a bike for commuting but dont know if i would be better with a road bike of a single speed.

milan_ns

It seems quite hilly to me

Norky

That is a reasonable amount of climbing. If you're asking the question, i.e. you don't know how you'd do, then I dare say you might struggle with a single speed bike at first, but then I don't know how fit you are outside cycling. It'd be more useful to look at the maximum gradient you're intending to ride up. Bikehike will render this, but its figures are not perfect.

When you say "road bike or a single speed"... you can have SS "road" bikes. Your question would be better put as "multiple/normal gears or just one?"

rolf_f

You'll spend most of your trip in one direction going slowly and most of your trip in the other direction going quickly. Any gear ratio you select for a single speed bike will therefore either be a poor compromise in both directions or good in one direction and terrible in the other.

Get a geared bike - you'll enjoy it more.

suzyb

Are you the same tvi_82 that joined the Lanarkshire MTB club forums recently :shock:

If so, I'd get gears if I were you. There are quite a few hills around here.

meanredspider

Yes - it's reasonably hilly for the distance (I do about twice the distance and twice the climb).

I was thinking about SS bikes as I rode in the other day. I'm sure they are fine for flat routes like much urban commuting but they'd be daft for my route. Your legs operate well in a fairly narrow band of "revs" (for me, about 70-110) - the higher being about 1.6x the lower. Yet my speeds on my journey vary from below 10mph for steep climbs to over 40mph for descents - that's a 4x difference. An SS bike simply isn't going to work.

andy83

I do a route that is a couple of hundred feet more ascent over 21 miles. I do it occasionsally on a fixed gear but dont think I could do it everyday

I do it when im feeling energetic, stcik with gears and fixed for fitness / fun

also how do you copy the elevation to post in the forum?

tvi_82

Thanks for the reply guys n gals

Yeah Suzyb im the same guy... trying to keep the mountain bike to off road rather than getting to work as changing the tyres all the time is becoming tedious, plus the right tool for the right job and all that.

Norky

andy83 wrote:

also how do you copy the elevation to post in the forum?

The method used to render the elevation/gradient plots on bikehike is a bit more complicated than a simple flat bitmap, so you can't just right-click and "Save as...". Instead you'll have to adjust your browser window until the elevation plot is the size you want then take a screenshot. Exactly how you do that depends on your operating system and version; alt-PrintScreen works to take a shot of the foreground window on many OSes. Then you'll want to load or paste the screenshot into a an image editor and crop it to just the gradient plot; save that, upload to your favourite image host and link the image URL as normal.



There are other services that'll produce a static bitmap from an uploaded GPS trace (GPX) file, but I can't think of one off the top of my head that works for a route manually plotted on a map.

vorsprung

I used to do a hilly commute to work - on the edge of Exmoor. I used a roadbike with single speed. Here is my current commute, that I was doing on single speed until January, when I got a new bike. Note that it is in km/metres, not miles/ft



42x17 was pretty easy and relaxing
42x16 was also easy and a bit faster on the flat/downhills. Probably the same but it felt faster
52x20 was a bit on the difficult side but I was able to climb all the hills

I think the key thing is are there any steep sections that will stop you?
For my part the 42x17 would go up short hills of 16% but I'd feel it in my legs
Longer, shallower hills that I could manage seated were actually easier than on gears