route mapping sites: height profiles are useless
- Thread starter inaperfectworld
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trustysteed
Guest
peanut said:
if you change the units to km instead of miles about 2/3rds down on the right hand side, it will give you metres for the elevationgradient
Landslide
Rare Migrant
- Location
- Called to the bar
bonj said:exactly, why does it matter?
Because some people are serious about their cycling.
HJ
Cycling in Scotland
- Location
- Auld Reekie
fossyant said:
You can't rely on GPS either, unless it has a built-in altimeter, at best you are only going to get an accuracy of about +/-25meters...
bonj said:
Not all.
If an organiser thinks his/her route is hilly enough to warrant a fraction of an AAA point, he/she will do the measuring.
Some organisers don't even bother doing the measuring and simply put "0" against 'AAA points', but the climbing might scrape 0.25 points if the organiser took the time to count the contours.
For Example. The Castleton Classic as far as I can recall does not have any AA points, but a lot of riders last April thought it should. I will check the info documents when I get home later.
Another ride is the 'Cambrian' which has 3.75 AA points. The info gives a figure of 3860m climbing. But where are the hills? Only following the route on streetmap.co.uk will identify the steep ones. Note them down on the routesheet and another note about 15 minutes prior to remind you to take on energy.
When you look on AUK's calendar and there is not a number for meters in square brackets, it's flat.
Spinney
Bimbleur extraordinaire
- Location
- Back up north
bonj said:exactly, why does it matter?
Motivation.
I'm still trying to build up my fitness (in distance and in terms of climbing). When I get back knackered from a day out, it's nice to know that I'm knackered because I've don X metres of climbing. Or to plan a route that will be just a bit more than I've managed to date, without wiping me out completely.
The correct value is irrelevant then as you're just looking to compare rides. So if you use the same site to plot your rides then you'll get that. For example, ride A had x metres of climbing but you felt more tired after ride B because it had x + 100 metres... the exact value of x doesn't matter to you.
As I said before, it doesn't bother me that the numbers say. My legs tell me when it's been hard work so putting a number to that is academic really! I will look at a ride profile to gain an idea of what a ride might be like but I realised the numbers are inaccurate, as the OP found.
On the club ride on Weds (I didn't know the route incidentally) we hit 2 20% climbs (a % estimated by a club mate!)... THAT would have been useful to know in advance because my front dérailleur had twisted around earlier in the ride and I couldn't get my small ring! Had I have know, I would have stopped to sort it out and not been forced to climb both on the middle ring!
As I said before, it doesn't bother me that the numbers say. My legs tell me when it's been hard work so putting a number to that is academic really! I will look at a ride profile to gain an idea of what a ride might be like but I realised the numbers are inaccurate, as the OP found.
On the club ride on Weds (I didn't know the route incidentally) we hit 2 20% climbs (a % estimated by a club mate!)... THAT would have been useful to know in advance because my front dérailleur had twisted around earlier in the ride and I couldn't get my small ring! Had I have know, I would have stopped to sort it out and not been forced to climb both on the middle ring!
