eaglesandcycling

I'm just curious. Using the metric system here FYI. If you ride say 40km, what is your normal goal as far as climbing for that ride, in meters? How about a 60km ride or an 80km ride? This is a very general question I know, just wondering what people are doing out there.. For me, I'm thinking a pretty easy 50km ride (regarding climbing) would be climbing 200 or 300 meters. A tough ride would be climbing 1000 meters (for a 50km ride). But i'm sure there are folks in here doing 5000 meters in 50km lol.

mattcalifornia

I don't necessarily have climbing goals, but looking at my Strava feed, most of my gravel rides are roughly 100' of climbing per mile average (that's round trip -- meaning the first half of the ride is 200' of climbing per mile, and the second half is -200' per mile). So, converting that into metric, we get 30.5m climbing per 1.6km riding, or roughly 19.1 meters of climbing per km. So, in a 50km ride, that would be 955 meters of climbing. Pretty close to what you are saying.

chaadster

For me, a 50k usually nets around 350m - 480m of elevation gain, and that’s about as much as can be done because it’s not very hilly around here.

mstateglfr 

35-60ft per mile is 90% of my gravel rides.
45ft per mile is probably the average. Its all from climbs out of creek and river valleys, so its pretty consistent thru the rides. There are no rides where its 100% climb for the first half and 100% descent for the second half.

Eric F 

Most of my gravel rides end up being around 1200-1500' per 10 miles (1150-1450M per 50km). I did what I would consider a non-climbing and easy gravel bike ride last night and still ended up with almost 1000' in 16 miles (305M in 25km). Pretty much nothing in my area is flat, and I live on a hill. I'm either going uphill when I leave the house, uphill when I come back home, or uphill both times.

dsaul

The average for the gravel events that I do is about 100 feet of elevation gain per mile, so that is what I try to get on my training rides. That equals about 1800M per 100K.

Jughed

Locally all of my rides, both road and gravel, are very flat except for the occasional short/steep climb. On the road - 15-20m gain @ 8-10%, some 12-15%... gravel rides have similar, with some 15-20++% short climbs.

Over a 100k I will see 2-300m climbing.

If I have a goal to do some climbing, about 1 hour away I can find 6-800m of climbing over 50k. Again, all short/steep climbs of 8-15%, but these climbs may have 30-40m of gain.

t2p

we’ve had to do our homework (research) on gravel rides in our area (western PA) because they typically include a fair amount of climbing - so we will pick/choose the more ‘kinder/gentler’ sections

(especially at our relatively advanced age and not advanced fitness level)

the downhills can also deserve attention - can be a challenge with a mix of steep / off-camber / loose gravel ... after (finally) topping one climb I was eager to let it hang out - - only to find myself in over my head and then off the road down into and up out of a drainage ditch (miraculous save)

Fentuz

In the cotswolds, hills aren t very long but can steep (10 to 20% off road).
between 400 and 600m total assent over 40k depending of the route.

rm -rf

EDIT-- oh, I got this thread from the "new posts" list, and didn't notice it was the gravel forum. The numbers below are for paved roads. There's essentially no gravel roads anywhere nearby here!

Here in the USA, "100 feet per mile" is the benchmark of a hilly ride. That's 1.9% if the ride only goes uphill. Double it for a loop ride: 3.8% if there's no flat sections on the ride at all. Including flat or shallow gradients, the climbs will need to be much steeper than that.

Locally, the hills are all less than 400 feet / 120 meters high, and most of the taller climbs are around 300 feet / 90 meters, varying from 3% to 10%, sometimes steeper than that. My ides are typically 35 miles / 55 km to 55 miles / 88 km, occasionally quite a bit longer. Total elevation gain ranges from 2000 feet / 600 m to 3300 feet / 1000 meters.

Rating local routes:
Flat: 25-30 feet per mile 0.5% =200m per 40km
Club rides: 40-50 feet per mile 0.8% =320m per 40km
Climber rides: 60-70 feet per mile. 1.2% =480m per 40km
It's difficult to draw a local route that's 100 feet per mile, since there's always at least some flat roads between climbs. =760m per 40 km

I've been riding hillier routes in the last few years -- those have the best scenery and the quietest roads. The pace is "maintainable" -- we've gotten pretty good at pacing these rides.
I'll be 70 years old soon.

HTupolev

I don't really have climbing goals.

Road rides here vary a lot. If you stick to the bases of the valleys, you can get huge miles in with almost no elevation gain. But there are always ridges and clumps of hills nearby.

Gravel mostly takes place in the foothills, so it's quite vertical. Anywhere from 100 to 180 feet per mile isn't too weird, although adding paved road miles can quickly skew things downward.