Is there a way to figure out how steep a climb is? I was on a ride last night and was going up a hile that was a 1/2 mile long, but I had to stand and push HARD and was still only moving 6-7 MPH. I would be interested to know incline solely to compare to the Tour.
rise/run
To calculate it mathematically, the simplest way requires that you know the elevation gained and the distance traveled. For example, if you gain 300 feet elevation over 3000 feet traveled, then the grade is 10% (300/3000=0.1).
Otherwise, you can buy a simple little device that hooks onto your handlebars and uses a level-bubble device to show grade.
well see I remember the forumla, the only problem now is that I don’t have the implements. Back in school everything was nicely placed on a graph for you. Any “cheap” ways to figure out the rise portion, the run portion is easy.
well see I remember the forumla, the only problem now is that I don’t have the implements. Back in school everything was nicely placed on a graph for you. Any “cheap” ways to figure out the rise portion, the run portion is easy.
www.topozone.com
YOu know now that I think about it the “run” portion of it isn’t quite easy to figure out either because you’re actually riding up the hypotenuse, which is actually a bit longer than the flat “run”.
Now I’m lost…ideas?
well see I remember the forumla, the only problem now is that I don’t have the implements. Back in school everything was nicely placed on a graph for you. Any “cheap” ways to figure out the rise portion, the run portion is easy.
www.topozone.com
Do you have an account with them? Is it pretty good? 49 a year seems steep when for the most part I don’t care about elevation and such (I live in Iowa, hills are few and far between)
Compared to the Tour, a half mile hill wouldn’t even register. Categories are explained here. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/bicycles-faq/part1/section-22.html
well see I remember the forumla, the only problem now is that I don’t have the implements. Back in school everything was nicely placed on a graph for you. Any “cheap” ways to figure out the rise portion, the run portion is easy.
www.topozone.com
Do you have an account with them? Is it pretty good? 49 a year seems steep when for the most part I don’t care about elevation and such (I live in Iowa, hills are few and far between)
Go to lower left, enter city and state, then change map size/detail to suit. Free.
Let me know where the road is and I can put it into TOPO and get elevation grade etc and let you know…if you’re not in a big hurry. Won’t be home this weekend.
~Matt
A guy in our roadie group has a bike mount GPS that tells him exactly the gradient on each hill. Kind of a neat toy.
Go to lower left, enter city and state, then change map size/detail to suit. Free.
Where does it say the elevation?
deckdrain
Where in IA are you?
I’m from central IA!
Compared to the Tour, a half mile hill wouldn’t even register. Categories are explained here. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/bicycles-faq/part1/section-22.html
Over the years, I have gathered statistics about all the climbs in the
Tour. It is summarized at
http://xenon.stanford.edu/~walker/tdfclimbs.html
The rec.bicycles FAQ (this part - written by Bruce Hilden) is pretty accurate
with regards to the general description of the categories. But his
characterization of some US climbs do not agree with the numbers from
recent TdFs. As an example, he says that Palomar Mountain might
be make it as high as cat 1, but the recent history puts its length
and grade clearly in the HC range. I have not ridden in Europe,
so I really cannot compare the climbs on a personal basis.
Regarding grade calculation, dividing rise (altitude change) by
length gives a pretty good approximation of grade for most
roads (within 1%). Of course, to get a better approximation,
you can compute the run, which is approximately equal to
the square root of length^2 - rise^2 (Pythagorean Theorem).
For determining elevations, you can either get your hands on
an altimeter (I love my old Avocet 50 for this reason) or look
on the web. A number of people have suggested topozone.
For the past couple years, I have been using the free online
map server at maptech (http://www.maptech.com - under
online maps and then maptech mapserver). And if you want
to see the climbs (and you have a recent Windows machine
and a fast internet connection), try downloading Google Earth
(http://earth.google.com).
– John
Go to google earth http://earth.google.com/ and download the product its awesome and free. you can do fly overs and zoom in.
Find the section you want and the curser will give you eleveation and Coordinates.
deckdrain
Where in IA are you?
I’m from central IA!
Iowa, Cedar Rapids. You?
Go to google earth http://earth.google.com/ and download the product its awesome and free. you can do fly overs and zoom in.
Find the section you want and the curser will give you eleveation and Coordinates.
Google gives “eye” elevation not elevation of surface…at least that’s what I see, there might be something I’m missing, if so please advise.
Got it…in case we’ve lost some of you, you have to have “Terrain” selected to get elevation
.
If you want to do this while you are riding, I know there are several bike computers that do this (Garmin is one) or there are the handlebar mount levels that you can buy that tell you too, like someone else said. I ride with folks that use both and tell us the grade on some climbs, as we are out of breath climbing…
Im looking for a bike computer with GPS and tracking, that I can dump into my computer and show speed at different points over the coarse I rode with elevations, ect…
if i remember correctly from trig, and i probably don’t, arcsin(elevation/distance traveled) gets you the angle of ascent
Math geeks feel free to correct me.