Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
Start at bottom of 5% hill, ride to top, stop ride. That’s 5% climb ratio for the ride, does that make it extreme?
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Start at bottom of 5% hill, ride to top, stop ride. That’s 5% climb ratio for the ride, does that make it extreme?
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
Going downhill counts as negative. Thus go down a 10% slope that is a climb ratio of -10%. You can have a climb with lots of 15% climbs that ends up as 1% overall unless you purposely try to avoid riding along any valleys at any point.
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
Like this one...2.5% is 2,500m over 100km. (8,200' in 62 miles) That's definitely not flat.
As you can see - there is hardly any flat on that audax route, and much of the climbing IS pretty steep. I used that route to work out my formula, since it feels at least twice as hard as a flat metric century ridden at the same speed. (Roughly 2,500 m of ascent in just over 100 km.)
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
How does that look if you draw it to scale?
UphillSlowly
Making my way slowly uphill
agree 100%
I tend to ride alone, so I determine the pace. Tend to go off HR, or by keeping an eye on the power meter, or the pace. Depends on lumpiness and how the Wahoo happens to be set up
UphillSlowly
Making my way slowly uphill
Fleet Moss x2! Chapeau 🎩
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
Unrealistically easy!
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
When I was doing your "shortest non repeating route for 1,000m" challenge in 2021 the best I managed was 2.8% over 40km. Steep, but as it was only 40k, doable.
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ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
The scale question is obviously relevant. I didn't plot that Season of Mists profile to make it look gnarlier than it is - I always adjust the vertical scale in my mapping software to show the 50 metre intervals as small as they will go. Any more compressed and the scale changes to 100 metre intervals.
Here is a comparison with the Manchester 100 profile with vertical and horizontal scales adjusted to match...
Season of Mists has around 2,500 m of ascent in just over 100 km; Manchester 100 has around 1,000 m of ascent in around 100 miles/160-ish km. My best time in both events was around 6 hours using about the same amount of effort, but the steep hills on SoM killed my legs more.
SoM is extremely hilly, with many climbs at 10%, 15%, 20%, and even a stretch of 25%; M100 is flattish-to-undulating with very few ramps as steep as 10%.
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
No. Overall ascent means just that. The number if metres ascended. Descent is not considered at all.
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
I wasn’t referring to overall ascent, I was referring to the climb ratio when going downhill. As in the post I was replying to.
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
You assume correctly. For these purposes only ascent is of interest. Going downhill is just ignored. It doesn't really count as flat, (and certainly not as negative) It just It just doesn't count at all.
Alex321
Veteran
- Location
- South Wales
I would have assumed it counted as part of the distance, which is why I suggested flat. If it doesn't count against the distance either, that makes a significant difference to the formula.
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
You're over complicating things. Only two figures are needed. Total ascent (the total height gained) and total distance. These are the ones that are easily available on Strava etc. Jost take those two figures and divide one by the other.
Keep it simple.
No need to worry about height lost, distance travelled while losing height, or in the flat.
UphillSlowly
Making my way slowly uphill
Have reflected on this. I was training for an event using a mixture of outdoor routes and turbo sessions. I wanted to manage my effort and training load sign Wednesdays very interested in working out how hard a route would/could be.
I think your formula is very useful - ours one of my few bookmarks, but think it reflects the minimum or potential hardness of a route. As others have pointed out it is still possible to make a flat route very hard for yourself by increasing your pace/intensity/normalised power.
I recently did a route that was 69km at 1%. But I pushed hard as I had left the dog at home and wanted to do it under 3 hours. If I had ridden it with my friend it would have taken 3.5 hours, at least. Same route, but my pace and effort made it harder.
This is a typical elevation profile for around our parts. My route described above (admittedly compressed by Strava phone app to make it look even harder).
Having said that, once routes start to get above, say 1.5% it is likely that the minimum effort required to do them and the difference with actual effort is less for any given rider.
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