How do you define 'Hilly'?
GavH
Posts: 933
Probably a stupid question and one I'm quite certain has been discussed on here before but I'll be damned if I can find it.
How do you differentiate between a hilly ride and a flat ride? I know that for most (if not all!) it'll be based on the amount of height gained during a ride. At present, a 40 mile ride which gains over 2000ft in height is what I'd call 'Hilly'. Question is, am I kidding myself on and do I need to gain even more than that in the same time to qualify it as a hilly ride? I vaguely remember someone on here saying that 500ft gained for every 10 miles ridden was what they called hilly. Is that a fair rule of thumb?
How do you quantify a hill ride?
How do you differentiate between a hilly ride and a flat ride? I know that for most (if not all!) it'll be based on the amount of height gained during a ride. At present, a 40 mile ride which gains over 2000ft in height is what I'd call 'Hilly'. Question is, am I kidding myself on and do I need to gain even more than that in the same time to qualify it as a hilly ride? I vaguely remember someone on here saying that 500ft gained for every 10 miles ridden was what they called hilly. Is that a fair rule of thumb?
How do you quantify a hill ride?
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But depending on what you use to determine your ascent figures you can get wildly different results.
Wut? That's like 1000ft in 100 miles, if I cycled out into the flats going out Lincolnshire way I'd probably still accumulate that from all the various bridges going over motorways and lumps and bumps that you get everywhere.
Meant 1000ft. Thought that'd be fairly obvious.
I've now edited my post.
When I go int peaks it must be hilly, I try go up the hardest climbs, following the hardest line. None if this zig zaging lark.
The below image is a total of 2,631ft of climbing over 52 miles, and includes Leith Hill (100ft off the top) - the highest point in Surrey, and second highest point in the South-East of England. The actual ascending parts though are only over 10.48 miles.
Surely the best way to determine a hilly route is -as Nap D says - one which involves hills. Failing that, simply profile the terrain?
FWIW, and I am relatively old and inexperienced (second season only), for me Richmond Park sets a standard - stop sniggering oop there! 11k run 110 m ascent (1% average gradient) in two bites; it is lumpy rather than hilly. Routes less than 0.75% and greater than 1.25% average gradients are, for me, flat or hilly respectively. As for v hilly I would rather not go there for the moment.
From here to Brighton including Turners Hill and the Beacon almost meets this average gradient test for being hilly - about 87k and 1050 m ascent; however, I would regard any day requiring more than 1000m ascent as hilly regardless of average gradient. A jaunt in the Surrey Hills (typically 50 m and 800m vertical gain) certainly meets my test.
This may not help you but at least I have clarified my own thinking!
Enjoy the challenge.
@furrag - care to share the route
Depends where you live I guess. Even my basic 16 mile morning loop is 1200 ft but I don't consider it hilly - even the damn 10 mile TT course is about 250ft
Todays ride, i wouldn't say that that was hilly, i'd say it's reasonably flat, but from about 20mi in, there was a headwind all the way home.
As for hilly rides, i hope to do this next week.. That is hilly!
http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12688640
See I'd class the 1st image to be the hilliest, and the second image to be of the route that is the easiest despite the higher elevation gain.
I'm confused as to how the York 100 is flat, it's going over the wolds and does indeed only have 1 major climb, but it's so up and down it's not flat, a flat ride would not be over rolling terrain that would be a mixed ride.
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Gents thanks for the responses - very insighful as to how others classify a hilly route. Doyler, thanks, but I was thinking someone had asked this a lot further back. Nevertheless, ironic that I was asking the question just prior to heading into the heart of Down for what I thought would be a 'hilly' ride. I ended up doing just 38miles with just over 1900ft of ascent and it certainly felt hillier than my usual rides these last 2 weeks. The Ardtanagh Rd was a bit of a shock! :shock:
I can do some proper hilly routes in 50/23, does not mean they are not hilly, it just means I'll be abit slower than everyone else and get back with VERY painful knees.
Well, the question was how do 'you' define hilly - as in a personal definition. Compared to the other sportives I've done, Etap du Dales, Lakeland Loop, Colomba Chemo classic etc, the York 100 was relatively flat. There were stretches of 10 and 20 miles at a time with no hills. York in general is considered very flat, hence why there are so many bikes parked up there.
I think the only answer is that its personal to where you live. If you live in Norfolk you'd consider the York 100 very hilly, but compared to the Dales, where I do my daily rides, it wasn't.
More generally, I have always been a bit suspicious of total ascent figures, both from GPS and mapping software/websites: I've often seen them give quite distinctly different figures for the same route. Does anyone know of any info on the accuracy or otherwise of the different methods?
What? That makes no sense.
Ask your average couch potato what a hill is and they'd show you a speed hump