Formula for how hard a ride is?

[lazybloke]

Does the scale for rating how hard a ride is not go something like this:

1. Easy to Chat Continuously
2. Able to Chat at Occasionally
3. Able to say short words
4. Unable to talk at all
5. Eyeballs out
6. Sick out of the Eyeballs

I suppose you can only truly give those ratings post ride and the OP maybe wants to rate a ride in advance.

They're good measures at single points in time during a ride, but don't necessarily describe the entire ride.

My favourite measure after a ride is how knackered my legs are climbing the stairs (or especially the loft ladder).
A mild ache and some tiredness - all fine, my riding intensity was right.
Shaking muscles - a little too intense!

 

[ColinJ]

elevation per mile seems key but what count as significant and what don't? Why not use elevation per mile for all climbs?

Er, what @Alex321 said!

My favourite measure after a ride is how knackered my legs are climbing the stairs (or especially the loft ladder).
A mild ache and some tiredness - all fine, my riding intensity was right.
Shaking muscles - a little too intense!

I started cycling in hilly West Yorkshire 20 years after my previous bike had been stolen from the school bike shed. For the first few months my legs got so knackered that I struggled to walk upstairs after rides to get washed and changed!

 

[PaulSB]

As a rule of thumb we use the "golden ratio" - 1000 feet of ascent for every 10 miles ridden would be a hard ride.

Looking back at Strava my most recent ride was 66 miles and 2900 feet, it was an easy ride. Double the climbing and my group would consider we had been on a tough ride.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I've tried and failed in the past. I like the look of @ColinJ 's proposal.

I generally consider length and climbing (overallelevation as a % of overall dist) seperately.

One note is that you can apply it only to routes, not to specific rides. That removes considerations of effort levels,

 

[Deleted member 121159]

TSS is Training Stress Score and a way of working out how much effort a workout is. It's used by Zwift and Training Peaks. Load is used by other programmes and seems to be interchangeable. I've found it useful to use Load to plan my training.

Formula for TSS: https://www.trainingpeaks.com/learn/articles/estimating-training-stress-score-tss/

Again is retrospective, but you can use your past history to predict how hard a ride will be. You can predict how hard workouts will be so why not routes.

Thanks for that

 

[Solocle]

That kind of works, but falls down with low levels of elevation gain, and it also doesn't take into account the steepness of the climbs.

I think it should be something more like distance (km) x (1 + (average_metres_per_km_of_ascents - 5)/20). (Maybe the numbers need tweaking slightly, but the idea seems sound.)

Where average_metres_per_km_of_ascents is measured purely on the significant climbs, so trivial slopes of rolling roads don't impact the severity calculation.

That would give...

• 75 for a (mythical?!) flat 100 km ride
• 100 for a typical flattish 100 km ride with only 500 m of significant ascent
• 125 for a rolling 100 km ride with 1,000 m...
• 150 for a lumpy 100 km ride with 1,500 m...
• 175 for a hilly 100 km ride with 2,000 m...
• 200 for a very hilly 100 km ride with 2,500 m...
• Some huge number for rides so mountainous that I would run away and hide from them!

v-Everesting Alpe du Zwift would be 400 as I understand it.

TBH both on time and subjective feeling it felt more like a 300 km audax.

 

[fossyant]

As a rule of thumb we use the "golden ratio" - 1000 feet of ascent for every 10 miles ridden would be a hard ride.

Looking back at Strava my most recent ride was 66 miles and 2900 feet, it was an easy ride. Double the climbing and my group would consider we had been on a tough ride.

This is what we'd say was a hard ride too. Mountain biking then you've got to think very differently.

Where it's achievable to do a 40 mile hilly ride in say under 3 hours, with 4000ft of climbing, chuck in off road with say 5500ft of climb, then you are looking at 7-8 hours. One thing many of us forget - ah, it's only 40 miles, nope that's a long way off road where the descents are as demanding as the ascents.

 

[MichaelW2]

There is a threshold from Easy to Hard and it can be quite sudden but it may be in a different place for each rider.
A Mohs Scale of Hardness for rides would require a PhD project....

 

[Jameshow]

This is what we'd say was a hard ride too. Mountain biking then you've got to think very differently.

Where it's achievable to do a 40 mile hilly ride in say under 3 hours, with 4000ft of climbing, chuck in off road with say 5500ft of climb, then you are looking at 7-8 hours. One thing many of us forget - ah, it's only 40 miles, nope that's a long way off road where the descents are as demanding as the ascents.

Also the bike makes a big difference, my MTB even with slicks is a much tougher ride than my road bike on lightweight wheels and 25mm tyres, but it suits the Devon roads and I get a hard effort up and down Devon hills in a shorter distance and time. Ideal for holidays

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Half a mile of 20% is very much harder than 1 mile of 10%.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Half a mile of 20% is very much harder than 1 mile of 10%.

Neither is hard if you have gearing to match your fitness.

 

[Dogtrousers]

My personal rule of thumb for overall ascent as a % of distance (easy to workout in metric distances, very difficult in imperial) is:

0-1% flat-undululating
1% undulating
1.5% getting hilly
2% definitely hilly
>2% aaargh
>2.5% nope. Do something else instead.

Combined with distance that gives two useful dimensions.

I suppose you could come up with a third measure of "punchiness", say median positive gradient or something like that but it would be very difficult to calculate and I'm not sure how valuable it would be.

You could combine these dimensions into a single figure with something like @ColinJ 's formula but I think they are more informative separately.

 

[UphillSlowly]

Thanks for that

Just had another thought. What do you use to plot your rides? (presuming you do that). When I plan a route in Strava it gives me an estimated time for it. Komoot does similar - and in Komoot you can set your athletic level (a scale of one to 5) - the time a route takes at a particular athletic level (which is synonymous to intensity/effort for me) is an indicator of how hard it it is. I am pretty sure that the calculations behind that are based on something similar to http://bikecalculator.com/
Though I have to admit I am not sure what you put in for "grade" - whether it is the over all gradient, or the average gradient for the uphill bits. The former figure tends to get used for outdoor rides, the latter for an online platform I have used. I prefer the latter because it gives you an idea of how steep the steep bits are.

E.g. The Applecross loop is 91 km with 1744 m elevation (according to RWGPS) = 1.9% elevation overall - so pretty lumpy. But it contains an ascent of Bealach na Ba, the climb in Britain with the most elevation in. There are websites that can tell you how much a route is uphill. I think you get my drift...
EDIT - I think I was trying to say what @Dogtrousers was alluding to - I use his rule of thumb

 

[UphillSlowly]

My personal rule of thumb for overall ascent as a % of distance (easy to workout in metric distances, very difficult in imperial) is:

0-1% flat-undululating
1% undulating
1.5% getting hilly
2% definitely hilly
>2% aaargh
>2.5% nope. Do something else instead.

>2.5% is not impossible, though I think it tends to be significantly hard in the UK - as you need a lot of up and down to generate the elevation for this figure. However, the Sella Ronda in the Dolomites as an overall ascent of 3.16% over 51 km and even though I unknowingly was brewing COVID when rode it, it probably wasn't as hard as some lumpy rides in Yorkshire or around Wales

 

[Deleted member 121159]

Because it is much harder to climb 100m in half a mile (12.5%) then ride flat for half a mile than it is to climb 100m in a mile (6.6%) of continuous climb.

The Bwlch mountain climb fairly near me is a Strava cat 3, but I find it easier than several of the cat 4s round here, because while it goes on for a long way, it is almost constant at 4-5%, while several of the cat4s peak at over 20%, with sustained stretches of 12%+

For me personally, I aim for a cadence on the flat of between 80 and 95. If I can keep that up on a hill, then it really isn't a hard enough hill to count much as making the ride harder.

Agreed, but why still not include easier climbs in the calculation? I know the bwlch mountain - as you say it's not that bad but I'd still consider it a major climb.