So what constitutes a 'hilly' ride
09-01-10, 01:00 PM
#26
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09-01-10, 01:04 PM
#27
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09-01-10, 01:13 PM
#28
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09-01-10, 01:20 PM
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I'd call any route with 75+ ft/mile a climbing ride. While you can certainly do any route hard enough to wipe you out, when the climbing gets closer to 100 ft/mile, there's no question it is, as umd called it, "climbey climbey".
FWIW, I like climbing, but hate rolling hills. Go figure.
FWIW, I like climbing, but hate rolling hills. Go figure.
09-01-10, 01:24 PM
#30
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I'm going to sorta agree, but I really think (as you've discussed) that it's terrain dependent. Our club has a route that we use as an informal time trial each year. It's 50 miles with a little over 4K ft. of climbing, but most of the climbing is of the 6% variety. The guy who originally set up the course designed it this way to try to keep everyone somewhat close together and not give an advantage to either great climbers or great flat TT people. The route is a great equalizer.
09-01-10, 01:27 PM
#31
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But I'm sure that was before your day...
09-01-10, 01:27 PM
#32
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09-01-10, 01:39 PM
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Riding the Deer Creek Challenge this last weekend seemed like a hilly ride. 106 miles, 12,751 elevation gained. However what made it seem hilly was not so much the amount of elevation but the consistency of sections over 10% and in particular the numerous short 14% climbs. I trained a lot on longer rides up to 140 miles at tiimes with over 16,000 elevation, but the general gradient was less so that did not align ideally with the course.
Basically for me anytime I ride over 10,000 feet in elevation I consider it to have been a hilly ride irrespective of distance.
Basically for me anytime I ride over 10,000 feet in elevation I consider it to have been a hilly ride irrespective of distance.
09-01-10, 01:41 PM
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09-01-10, 01:42 PM
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09-01-10, 01:44 PM
#40
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I'd say 75 ft per mile average over a ride is moderately hilly, 100 ft/mile is very hilly. 80mi 7k ft is a pretty hilly ride, and fairly normal for around here in N. CA - with most of the climbing concentrated to a narrow 20-30mi range.
The length of the climbs also matters. I find the front side of Mt Hamilton fairly challenging the few times I do it each year, even though it's only 4000 ft over 20.5 miles. The average grade is only 6.5%, but at 10mph that means you're spinning for 2 hours straight with very limited coasting and letup. (There is one small valley downhill enroute to the 3700 ft peak.) I'm not quite used to this and always feel it the last couple of miles (when the peak is right above you but you still have 2-3 miles to go!). There are of course plenty of riders who are faster than this and I always get passed on the way up. Plenty of riders are slower, too.
The length of the climbs also matters. I find the front side of Mt Hamilton fairly challenging the few times I do it each year, even though it's only 4000 ft over 20.5 miles. The average grade is only 6.5%, but at 10mph that means you're spinning for 2 hours straight with very limited coasting and letup. (There is one small valley downhill enroute to the 3700 ft peak.) I'm not quite used to this and always feel it the last couple of miles (when the peak is right above you but you still have 2-3 miles to go!). There are of course plenty of riders who are faster than this and I always get passed on the way up. Plenty of riders are slower, too.
09-01-10, 01:48 PM
#42
You gonna eat that?
I accidentally found a 40% grade (on my commuter hybrid with loaded panniers) yesterday on my way home. The 40% was short; the number comes from Bikely.com. Tough though....
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09-01-10, 01:49 PM
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09-01-10, 01:57 PM
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09-01-10, 02:10 PM
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With this new Garmin Joule 2.0 head unit I've been paying attention to altitude gain on my rides. I've come to the conclusion (through observation all summer while riding hills and mountains) that for me a real hilly ride is one that features about 1,000 feet (or as close to it as I can get) of vertical gain for every 10 miles ridden. For example 5,000 vertical feet of gain in 50 miles is very hilly, you have to really hit a lot of climbs to get there...
...But there are just a ton of rollers and smaller hills here with 50-200 feet in gain. In some ways I find that harder than the longer climbs I was doing in Europe, where you can settle into a rhythm and just climb for 30-50 minutes at a clip....
...But there are just a ton of rollers and smaller hills here with 50-200 feet in gain. In some ways I find that harder than the longer climbs I was doing in Europe, where you can settle into a rhythm and just climb for 30-50 minutes at a clip....
While the routes and elevation profiles were available beforehand, the organizers didn't make any mention that the routes were hilly. I stopped counting the people I passed walking their bikes up the hills.
I totally agree with you on the rollers thing. That same ride in Philly was mostly suburban neighborhoods, so we were up and down small, steep hills all day, usually punctuated at the bottom of each hill by a stop sign or cross street. So hard to get a rhythm going. And these were old neighborhoods with small, odd streets from before the more sculpted neighborhood planning we have now. I would rather do 4600 feet of climbing over 3-4 steady climbs than the herky-jerky start and stop, slog-it-up-and-around-another-corner climbing.
09-01-10, 02:16 PM
#49
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09-01-10, 02:17 PM
#50
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You're out of control. Back to the 33 with you mein kleine Road Nazi.