altitude

[bonj2]

I just went on gmaps-pedometer.com and found out some quite interesting things, about my commute to, and from, work.
Firstly I would have guessed that my work and home are about on the same level, but it turns out that work is at 472 ft a.s.l, and home is at 170 ft a.s.l.
So you would think I would be a lot quicker to get home than to get there, but it's almost the same - sometimes about 10 mins shorter but i think that's more often due to southerly tailwind (home is north work is south.)
Secondly that my normal route BACK from work involves about 600ft of climbing (and obviously therefore about 900 ft of descending).
... this is the route i have always taken, and is the route i take when i'm driving aswell, and is the route that viamichelin.com recommends. But I have just put the route that google.co.uk recommends with 'avoid highways' ticked into gmap-pedometer and it would appear to involve only about 65ft of climbing! i.e. only about a tenth as much... this route is slightly longer, but only by about a mile. So i'm wondering whether it will be quicker? i'm hopefully going to try it tomorrow! bid me luck in not taking a wrong turning...

anyhow i guess the point of this thread is that while we all know that "from x to y is a bitch of a climb" and "from a to b is always a fun descent", it's actually interesting to note the altitude profile of our routes as a whole, and more importantly quite good to know the absolute altitude of various points so we can tell without having done a route how much climbing and how much descending there'll be...

comments? anyone else done any similar analysis?

 

[alecstilleyedye]

no. unless "it's downhill in the morning and uphill in the afternoon" counts.

 

[bonj2]

Also, anyone know of any 'deceptive' hills? I know at least a couple of stretches of road that from looking at the lie of the land APPEAR to be hills, but to cycle on them you can tell they're in fact a lot more flat than they look. And there's a bit near work where a to d via c seems to involve a fairly big uphill, but a to d via b seems to involve hardly any hills... weird...


edit: a -> c is an uphill, and i thought c -> d was flat, but it's actually down again! that's obviously another 'deceptive' road i've discovered. It's one of those roads that isn't ever that steep, but is a lot longer than it looks - so it actually manages to descend quite a bit.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

parts of the macclesfield - cat & fiddle A537 can be like that.

 

[Crackle]

Sort of: Some rides definetly have a 'grain'. You can't always tell you are going uphill short of it being an obvious soddin' climb. I find the steady grind 'of why aren't I going faster' the least satisfying type of ride.

I haven't used the gmaps site but I did a comparison of ascent data on a couple of the popular ones, like Bikely and Mapmyride and they vary hugely, o not sure how reliable your data might be.

 

[bonj2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_hill
i was wondering if there'd be any known illusion hills near me
but apparently there's only a couple of known ones in england.

iirc my dad once did a trick on a scout camp whereby he had a table within a tent that was sloping downhill towards his end, but the tent was ske-wift the other way more, so it appeared to be sloping the other way, and he got people to stand at the other end of the table, and got a round object and said 'when i let go of this, if you can catch it when it rolls off the table, you can have a fiver, if I catch it first, you run all the way round the field -ok?' they always accepted the challenge, and of course it just rolled straight towards him into his lap! everybody fell for it, it was weird

 

[bonj2]

Sort of: Some rides definetly have a 'grain'. You can't always tell you are going uphill short of it being an obvious soddin' climb. I find the steady grind 'of why aren't I going faster' the least satisfying type of ride.

I haven't used the gmaps site but I did a comparison of ascent data on a couple of the popular ones, like Bikely and Mapmyride and they vary hugely, o not sure how reliable your data might be.

hmm, cheers - i'll have a look at those sites.

 

[Crackle]

My rather brief analysis was recorded here

http://www.cyclechat.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5711

There's a hill in Scotland, very similiar to your dad's tent trick, darned if I can remember the name of it just now, where if you take your handbrake off you roll the opposite way to the way you think you will.

Edit: The Electric Brae

 

[Elmer Fudd]

Electric Brae, just South of Ayr

 

[summerdays]

I usually check out my route in Memory Map, and definately have been known to take a longer route to avoid an unnecessary down/up (and plenty of those around here). But some hills are better than they look in Memory Map and the converse is true too...

 

[gambatte]

Think I might be doing the opposite and looking for some hills...

(Bonj - Thinking about such as the one out of whiston & up past Ulley. Where I can train for a bit of climbing endurance)

 

[snorri]

sometimes about 10 mins shorter but i think that's more often due to southerly tailwind (home is north work is south.)
comments? anyone else done any similar analysis?

After strenuous denial, there now appears to be an acceptance on your part of conventional wisdom regarding prevailing winds.

 

[frog]

Also, anyone know of any 'deceptive' hills?

Yep! Got one that I free wheel down in the morning and it looks 'down' but when I go the other way in the evening it's an easy pedal and looks flat as a pancake??????

There was a long country lane I used to do on a Sunday morning. First time I did it I'd only been out of hospital a week. I was so knackered, and scared, when I got to the villiage at end of it I had to take a rest. It looked so flat and I had a gentle breeze behind me as well. I though I was having another embolism! When I got home I checked the map and it had three contour lines running across it!

I've got a Garmin Edge 305 now so I can see a difference between the bike laying down and being upright

 

[Tetedelacourse]

On my commute route I am now aware of hills that, until cycle commuting began, I didn't think were hills. If you don't know they're hills I agree with Crackle it can be soooo disheartening. But once you do, you can either a) enjoy the extra workout or take comfort from the fact that it's a hill. I'd be quite interested in knowing how much climbing etc I was doing but there's such variation between measurment tools that it seems a waste of time.

 

[Arch]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_hill
i was wondering if there'd be any known illusion hills near me
but apparently there's only a couple of known ones in england.

iirc my dad once did a trick on a scout camp whereby he had a table within a tent that was sloping downhill towards his end, but the tent was ske-wift the other way more, so it appeared to be sloping the other way, and he got people to stand at the other end of the table, and got a round object and said 'when i let go of this, if you can catch it when it rolls off the table, you can have a fiver, if I catch it first, you run all the way round the field -ok?' they always accepted the challenge, and of course it just rolled straight towards him into his lap! everybody fell for it, it was weird

When I was growing up in Belfast, we used to have days out at the zoo and the picnic area was on the side of a hill, and they hadn't thought to level the picnic tables, so any round fruit always rolled off. Sorry, no mystery or deception there, we just always thought it was hilarious.

As for deceptive hills, yes, I find them all the time - always up, so I'm struggling along when it looks flat. Never works out on the way back though, I think oh, now I'll get to freewheel, but the damn road's levelled out again....