stupid question - climbing...

kamil1891

Maybe I'm missing something but these routes do not look like they include that amount of climbing http://www.dartmoorclassic.co.uk/routes.html . Living where I live, I can ride a lot of 400-500m hills that begin at about 50-100m during one ride, but according to bikeroutetoaster.com it is pretty difficult to exceed 1500m in 100km.

What do you think?

jim453

Bike route toaster gets elevation wrong, as does all mapping software seemingly. Don't know why.

As regards to the Dartmoor route. Rest assured, it's definitely lumpy. Second climb up to Princetown is a monster.

That's a good event that, get involved.

HebdenBiker

I live not far from you and I know what you mean That 100km ride, I'd say, is difficult. Have you ever ridden the Over The Edge sportive from Hollingworth Lake? That's a hilly ride and is considered challenging. The Dartmoor Classic 100km route has double the climbing and is only 10 miles longer in length.

I have to admit I would struggle to complete a ride like that in a respectable time. It's all relative, of course. There are harder rides out there.

kamil1891

Well, I have just checked the ridewithgps website and plotted my quick 50km route and that came like 950m of climbing whereas on bikeroute toaster it shows less than 700. This is quite a big difference

So, what people recommend for checking the elevation?

Yes Jim453, it looks like but unfortunatelly I live too far away

HebdenBiker

Sorry Kamil I misunderstood your question :oops:

kamil1891

HebdenBiker wrote:

I live not far from you and I know what you mean That 100km ride, I'd say, is difficult. Have you ever ridden the Over The Edge sportive from Hollingworth Lake? That's a hilly ride and is considered challenging. The Dartmoor Classic 100km route has double the climbing and is only 10 miles longer in length.

I have to admit I would struggle to complete a ride like that in a respectable time. It's all relative, of course. There are harder rides out there.

No, I haven't. The only ones I've done are Tour of the Pennines 100km and manchester 100m (but that's not hilly). I only ride since June. The former one included 1600m of climbing according to the bikeroutetoaster and it wasn't easy. However doable in <4h.

I'm disappointed by bikeroutetoaster. I trusted it! :oops:

P.S. on the other hand, it only means that I've been doing more climbing than I thought The ridewithgps seems to have more realistic gradients.

amaferanga

They're all wrong. Just use one site as a guide to compare rides, but don't take much notice of the actual ascent figure quoted.

Pumpkin Positive

If you look on some of the Garmin logs from the last event the ascents came in at around 3000m for the 100mile route

here are two randomly selected (not mine)

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95098754
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95192793

kamil1891

amaferanga wrote:

They're all wrong. Just use one site as a guide to compare rides, but don't take much notice of the actual ascent figure quoted.

That's what I'll do

marcusjb

As I understand it, the most accurate method for calculating ascent is to contour count on OS maps - even that is going to have some inaccuracy, but nothing compared to the mapping sites.

There some info in how ascent is calculated for Audax Altitude Award points here (which may be useful to some):

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/audaxaltitudeaward/AAAClimbing.htm

The climbing is generally rounded to the nearest 250m in Audax descriptions - so it's certainly not mega accurate, but close enough to help you decide whether a ride is hilly or not!

dabber

kamil1891 wrote:

P.S. on the other hand, it only means that I've been doing more climbing than I thought The ridewithgps seems to have more realistic gradients.

I don't trust any of them on gradients. I've just back from France and put a climb I did into ridewithGPS which gave me a maximum gradient of 38%. Much as I might like to think I'm superman I know I'd never get up anything like 38%. :roll:

John.T

Routes created on ridewithgps.com are pretty close to the correct amount of climbing. I have checked a route on there and then ridden is with a Garmin Edge 500 and the totals were very close. When I upload a ride to rwgps and Garmin Connect they never quite tally with the 500 in spite of using the same data.
Dabber. Did you upload the ride from a bike computer (with or without a barometric altimeter) or did you just plot the climb on rwgps. I have found the odd spike with uploads but it is generally fairly good. In fact bloody marvelous considering it is all done by a little box on your handlebars.

MrChuck

Dunno about accuracy of those numbers but there is definitely plenty of climbing on that route (same as this year I believe).

dabber

John.T wrote:

Dabber. Did you upload the ride from a bike computer (with or without a barometric altimeter) or did you just plot the climb on rwgps. I have found the odd spike with uploads but it is generally fairly good. In fact bloody marvelous considering it is all done by a little box on your handlebars.

No, I just plotted the route on their website (my Catseye doesn't have altitude or download capability).