What's a hilly ride for you?

[DHallerman]

Even though imperfect, I like using Ride With GPS to see the elevation profiles of rides I do. That's true even for the 15-mile lunchtime rides my brilliant SO and I take during the week.

I also like taking the total elevation gain in feet and dividing it by the total miles, to get the "elevation gain per mile" metric. For me, that's the best way to judge how hilly any ride is overall.

So lately, we've been going on lunchtime rides with 72, 75, even 78 feet per mile elevation gain.

For us, that's a hilly ride.

For you? How do you calculate a hilly ride?
And how many feet per mile elevation gain do you define as "hilly"?

Dave, who really loves hills except early in the season when they're painful

[p nut]

I live along the foothills, so typical weekday rides are ~125-170 ft/mile, but they're shorter ~15-25 milers. Weekend rides are 115-140 ft/mile, but much longer.

[weisan]

When I start to cramp... :D

[MattTuck]

My average elevation gain per mile this year is 61. For me, it is a sort of a bimodal distribution. Either a ride is quite hilly, or pretty flat.

I'd say for a ride to be considered "hilly", it would have to be over 2,500 feet of climbing OR greater than 80-90 ft per mile.

[DrSpoke]

Here in SoCal, at least among my group of riding friends, our benchmark is what we call 1:1 for road, mountain and adventure rides. That is, 100' per mile or 1,000' per 10 miles. But 70' per mile and above certainly qualifies as hilly. As examples, my Saturday ride was 5,010' per 76 mi or 65.9. My Saturday ride was 3,829' per 43 miles or 89.0. And I would say both qualified as hilly.

[nash]

I don't keep track but in the Bay Area every good ride is hilly. Give or take one can usually count on ~100 ft per mile.

[MattTuck]

Here in SoCal, at least among my group of riding friends, our benchmark is what we call 1:1 for road, mountain and adventure rides. That is, 100' per mile or 1,000' per 10 miles. But 70' per mile and above certainly qualifies as hilly. As examples, my Saturday ride was 5,010' per 76 mi or 65.9. My Saturday ride was 3,829' per 43 miles or 89.0. And I would say both qualified as hilly.

Yeah, this is where it gets a bit more complicated.

Take two courses, one 2.5 miles at 10%, followed by 2.5 miles of flat and the other 5 miles at 5%.

Wind up with the same amount of climbing, but (to my legs anyway) the 10% gradient is going to feel a lot worse.

[kramnnim]

Anything with over 10k' of gain is hilly.

[christian]

In Westchester Putnam 50ft/mi is normal, 80ft/mi is hilly, 100ft/mi means I went and looked for every hill.

[Waldo]

Ordinarily, it's about 100' per mile, but since I've started doing Strava climbing challenges, I've been going out looking for more hills and it's been around 120'/mile.

[ptourkin]

Here in SoCal, at least among my group of riding friends, our benchmark is what we call 1:1 for road, mountain and adventure rides. That is, 100' per mile or 1,000' per 10 miles. But 70' per mile and above certainly qualifies as hilly. As examples, my Saturday ride was 5,010' per 76 mi or 65.9. My Saturday ride was 3,829' per 43 miles or 89.0. And I would say both qualified as hilly.

San Diego concurs. Anything over 1:1 is climby. Anything under .7 means you were a slacker and stayed on the coast. I don't know how you'd ever get that being so close to Palomar and Cole Grade :-)

[kingpin75s]

Here in SoCal, at least among my group of riding friends, our benchmark is what we call 1:1 for road, mountain and adventure rides. That is, 100' per mile or 1,000' per 10 miles. But 70' per mile and above certainly qualifies as hilly. As examples, my Saturday ride was 5,010' per 76 mi or 65.9. My Saturday ride was 3,829' per 43 miles or 89.0. And I would say both qualified as hilly.

Good benchmark. That is the ratio that was in my head when reading this thread and is the kind of riding I do when I am out in southern NH each year. Every 10 miles is about 1,000'.

[Mzilliox]

if there's not much flat, and lots of hills i consider it a hilly ride.:bike:

and when you live in a town called "Grants Pass", 90% of your rides are hilly. Not much mountains, but a lot of hills.

[beeatnik]

No pain, no pain.

[sandyrs]

^what he said.

[beeatnik]

I find this extremely depressing.


He's a former jockey and prolly late 50's.:eek:

[sandyrs]

He's a former jockey and prolly late 50's.:eek:

I don't get it. Does he have a goal? Is there a record for elevation gain in a year?

[ANAO]

25m/km is hilly for me.

I ride with some guys who boast that anything short of 100 ft./mile is not considered a climbing day. I don't believe they've ever ridden 10k feet in one day though.

[beeatnik]

I don't get it. Does he have a goal? Is there a record for elevation gain in a year?

Hard to say. He lives in a foothill community and just seems to really enjoy climbing. Every morning he does "repeats" on a well known climb (Chantry). 8 to 10x with 8k to 10k of elevation. As a jockey and horse trainer, he's used to getting up super early. He rides with 2 Garmins, just in case.

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/280344

[sandyrs]

25m/km is hilly for me.

I ride with some guys who boast that anything short of 100 ft./mile is not considered a climbing day. I don't believe they've ever ridden 10k feet in one day though.

Funny the opinions people who don't live near any real climbs can have about climbing, huh? Plenty of that in Boston too. Similar situation to NY/Bear Mountain- Mt Wachusett is a 100mi ride round trip, and even that ride is only 5-6k.

[ANAO]

Funny the opinions people who don't live near any real climbs can have about climbing, huh? Plenty of that in Boston too. Similar situation to NY/Bear Mountain- Mt Wachusett is a 100mi ride round trip, and even that ride is only 5-6k.

Exactly. There are a couple of strong guys in the group, but the one who talks the biggest game went to college with my pops (who told me his nickname was "The Mouth") and is constantly trying to get me to come out with them. They ride once a week for a 3-4 hour adrenaline ride. There's no flow to their ride, it's just punch it. The entire time.

I go out sometimes and inevitably get dropped by the end with an IF above .8, normalized watts always above 250, and he's always hovering around me as the other 2 or 3 strong guys are up the road looking back, going "Yeah man, good ride today. 5 miles to go, but we didn't climb so much. I'm showing 60 miles and only 4,000 feet. I like to shoot for 100 ft./mile."

It's then that I wish I hadn't ridden all week, and saved up something in the reserve to summarily drop him on the next climb. All 5'5", 135 lb. of him.

[rain dogs]

According to Garmin, just dividing out yearly totals I avg 81.4ft/mile on the year. So, if that's normal. Hilly would for me I guess start being around 1.5x that. So like 120'/mile? Or 53m/km. 5%.... that sounds hilly.

[nmrt]

i've been doing only one hilly ride for the past year -- the super-flagstaff ride in boulder. it is about 390 ft/mile. it is a great ride. and this is what i call a nice hill.

just dont ask me how fast i do it. suffice to say that i get passed by people by people chatting on their bike while i feel my lungs collapsing.

[ripvanrando]

This is a difficult question to answer. If I think of two extremes for a short ride and then a long ride.

Consider two 40 milers

Ride 1. 5% up for 20 miles and 20 miles down. 5,280 feet of climbing

Ride 2. 12% up for a mile and then descend. 6 miles of flats. Another 12% climb for a mile followed by a descent. Repeat four times for 40 miles and ONLY 5,069 feet of climbing.

Ride 1 would be easy for me and frankly would be mostly big ring whereas ride two would cause more stress and would be much harder despite having less climbing.

Consider two 200 milers

Ride 3 Starts with 120 miles with 6,000 feet of rolling terrain and then concludes with 80 miles consisting of Ride 1 above and finishes with Ride 2. 200 miles and 16,000 total feet.

Ride 4 starts with the hilly ride 2 and then ride 1 and finally the 120 miles with 6,000 feet of rolling terrain. 200 miles and 16,000 total feet.

Ride 4 would be the hardest of these four scenarios by far even though it only has 80 feet per mile compared to 125 feet per mile of ride 1 and ride 2.

I recall doing something like 203 miles thru part of Ky and Va where I racked up 26 or 27,000 feet of climbing that day but the real killer was the number of steep climbs putting me at threshold for over three hours total for the day and nearly one hour above threshold. I cannot climb 15% + at tempo.

I normally consider 80 feet per mile or more to be hilly as long as it is a ride of reasonable distance with climbs at least 8%.

[unterhausen]

I have a gravel 200km ride that has about 9000 feet of climbing. I tried to get it up to 10k, but it was really not that easy. That's enough climbing for me. The last 20 miles or so are uphill, but very gradually. I'm usually totally blown out by that point. I tried to make a very flat 200km route, but the least I could get it down to was 50 ft/mile. I think that's just about the minimum for here.

[steamer]

In the context of rides 50 miles or less, I consider...

20 feet or less feet of climbing per mile to be 'flat'
20 to 40 feet to be 'gently rolling'
40 to 60 to be 'rolling" or 'somewhat hilly'
60 to 80 to be 'very hilly'
80+ to be 'mountainous'

Where I live (central Pennsylvania) it is possible to do a ride at around 30 feet per mile but it's hard.

More typical is 40 to 70.

100 or more is possible but requires going a bit out of your way to look for climbing, and the route as plotted on a map often looks ridiculous.

Total ride distance affects perceptions. What feels like 'rolling' on a short ride can start to feel like "very hilly" on a 200K or longer.

Until it feels like "very hilly", it's not too much.

[makoti]

I've always gone with 100ft/mile = hilly, but I wouldn't quibble with you at 78ft/mile, either.

[OtayBW]

70-75 ft/mi elevation gain is probably near the norm around here. Occasionally it will spike up to 90+, and I usually have to drive ~45 minutes to get any decent miles in at ~50 ft/mi. Of course, I also live on a road with ~0.15 mi of 18-20% grade...

[jmal]

In my area, 85 feet per mile is typical, but there are routes that approach 200 feet per mile (gravel or singletrack). I think 75-85 feet per mile is where things get hilly. Having said that, I've done much flatter rides that destroyed me, so it's a deceptive metric.

[ptourkin]

I get between 40 and 99 feet per 20 miles on the track. Probably doesn't qualify.

[ofcounsel]

My "average" this past year, according to strava, is about 96ft elevation gain per mile. Last night's ride was only 7.9 miles, but 1550 feet of elevation gain.

I live in a hilly area.

[Cicli]

Back and forth over an overpass?

[ofcounsel]

Here in SoCal, at least among my group of riding friends, our benchmark is what we call 1:1 for road, mountain and adventure rides. That is, 100' per mile or 1,000' per 10 miles. But 70' per mile and above certainly qualifies as hilly. As examples, my Saturday ride was 5,010' per 76 mi or 65.9. My Saturday ride was 3,829' per 43 miles or 89.0. And I would say both qualified as hilly.

That's about right for us in Orange County as well.

[Bob Ross]

I've always gone with 100ft/mile = hilly, but I wouldn't quibble with you at 78ft/mile, either.




^^^ This

[John H.]

55 feet/mile is about the flattest I have.
A lot of climbing for me is 125-135 feet per mile (road) or 175-ish feet per mile (offroad).

[Elefantino]

Go out front door. Turn left. Climb.

[dustyrider]

I read the signs! Valley floor, where I live, is around 4,700' with the top of my most common loop being 6,640'. Depending on how I ride the loop, it's either a 14.5 mile climb to the 6640 or 9 miles. I average 50 miles a ride and try to get the climbing done in the middle. It's super easy to add another 1,000'+ and still make it a loop. It takes quite a bit more to get up to the 10,000' mark.

[FL_MarkD]

The Garmin read 100ft Elevation for 28 miles on my Tuesday night ride. That is not a misprint. :)

When you ride in most of Florida along the coast, flat and wind are the norm.

[Peter B]

100'/mi is a good metric for a 'hilly' ride.

[ajhapps]

Funny the opinions people who don't live near any real climbs can have about climbing, huh? Plenty of that in Boston too. Similar situation to NY/Bear Mountain- Mt Wachusett is a 100mi ride round trip, and even that ride is only 5-6k.

Ha, yup, living in NYC, a Bear Mountain ride was a big day that required some serious planning (and possibly a train pass). I think it is like 1,200 feet in total elevation. Now in the Bay Area, that's like a warmup on a regular day. I think I have to climb 600 feet total before I even get to the GGB, just to leave the city. Either way, I am still a terrible climber, so I guess this just means I suffer like 8x more now.

[maxn]

My "average" this past year, according to strava, is about 96ft elevation gain per mile. Last night's ride was only 7.9 miles, but 1550 feet of elevation gain.

I live in a hilly area.

mine is almost exactly the same overall average, my living-in-a-hilly-area brother :)

Most rides are what I would consider hilly around here. The standard work ride that a lot of guys do is 140ft/mile, for example. My "start climbing from GO " de-stress ride is 2000 feet over 11 miles.

[SlowPokePete]

In Westchester Putnam 50ft/mi is normal, 80ft/mi is hilly, 100ft/mi means I went and looked for every hill.

Yup... 100 feet/mile around here is pretty hilly for a road ride, not unusual in the woods.

SPP

[marciero]

Me also-100ft/mile has been the rule-of-thumb benchmark for very hilly ride. Easy to compute at a glance, nice round numbers, and is about what some of the popular dirt routes are in Northeast. For the most part, I have not been able to put together road routes of any distance that hit that mark without, say, doubling back over climbs-sort of not allowed. VT Six Gaps is less than that, for example, and even has some dirt. I've put together routes 100+ mile road or mostly road routes that approach 90 ft/mile. Still very hilly in my book. On the other hand, dirt routes in Vermont easily hit and exceed the 1:1 mark, even with lots of relative flat on paved roads.
I've done some road rides in Northern Cal that I would bet came close to it-Kings Ridge, Coleman, Skaggs, Fish Rock (that was dirt), Geysers, Mountain View, etc

[oldpotatoe]

i've been doing only one hilly ride for the past year -- the super-flagstaff ride in boulder. it is about 390 ft/mile. it is a great ride. and this is what i call a nice hill.

just dont ask me how fast i do it. suffice to say that i get passed by people by people chatting on their bike while i feel my lungs collapsing.

Really? There are so many rides outta Boulder that aren't flat..seems a shame to only do SuperFlag if ya want it to be hilly..and ya gotta come down, which can be iffy/dangerous...depending on traffic and knucklehead quotient.

[weisan]

Some sicko had designed this to be the penultimate one-day sufferfest in Austin and it stuck, been going on for several years now.
http://www.dashugel.com/faq/

I did it one year, reached the half-way mark and decided that I had enough, called it a day and rode back to my car.

[Mzilliox]

today i did a 2.7 mile climb with over 2000 feet of elevation gain, it was a big hill

[Kentf14]

A standard NorCal ride is 100 ft/mile. It's really hard to go lower than that and really easy to go above.

K

[dgauthier]

(...) I also like taking the total elevation gain in feet and dividing it by the total miles, to get the "elevation gain per mile" metric. For me, that's the best way to judge how hilly any ride is overall.(...)

Dang it! I leave the house, I ride 10%, 20%, even (very, very short) 30% grades, and when I get back home, my total elevation gain is always zero! What I am I doing wrong?

[nmrt]

fortunately (or unfortunately) this has been my only ride for the past one year. In about an hour and half I can get a great workout. Going out east into the flatlands would require a longer ride to get the same benefits of the superflag/gross reservoir climb.
Really? There are so many rides outta Boulder that aren't flat..seems a shame to only do SuperFlag if ya want it to be hilly..and ya gotta come down, which can be iffy/dangerous...depending on traffic and knucklehead quotient.

[ofcounsel]

today i did a 2.7 mile climb with over 2000 feet of elevation gain, it was a big hill

That's a big hill :-)

[cnighbor1]

Mt Diablo CA
1. to junction 2000' gain in 6 miles
2. to top 3750 in 11.5 miles

[krhea]

We have a Monday ride we call "Altitude Therapy", our benchmark is also 100'/mile. Some times we exceed this, other times we might be a bit short but that's where we "like to be". The route changes weekly and whoever chooses knows the ride stats and let's everyone know pre-ride. Some weeks it's all short and steeps, other weeks it's a few long grinds. Tomorrow's ride email just hit my box and it looks like tomorrow will be short and steeps with a lot of stuff at 7-10% and a couple at 17%.

[Ti Designs]

Hills: the cyclist's version of a pissing contest...

People come from places and tell you about how hard the hills are, or they say they're good climbers 'cause they come from the land of hills. It's not about the hills, it's about the rider. In the Boston area we really don't have any big hills, so our hill training strings together a bunch of shorter hills. We had a guy show up on the hill ride, tell everyone he's from California where they have real hills that take half an hour to climb. It seemed like it took him about that to get up one of our short hills...

[beeatnik]

Ti, are there any Colombians in Boston?

[cloudguy]

We had a guy show up on the hill ride, tell everyone he's from California where they have real hills that take half an hour to climb. It seemed like it took him about that to get up one of our short hills...

I dunno. Seems like even in the pros some guys (e.g., Gilbert) are better on rolling terrain vs others (e.g., Van Gardener) that kill it on the long sustained climbs. You know, different fast- vs slow-twitch muscle fiber counts, etc. Maybe the Cali-dude was all slow twitch - kind of like me.

[maxn]

Ti, are there any Colombians in Boston?

A lot of people are saying that Boston is where Colombians go to train these days

[weisan]

To get this thread back on the right track...:D
Here's a video of the infamous Crapapple Hill our Sat. group ride had to make it over this past weekend.
I would say a ride is "hilly" if we have maybe 2 or 3 of these on a 70+ mile route sprinkled with rollers and the typical triple digit temperature during summer in Texas.
https://vimeo.com/185250101

[oldpotatoe]

To get this thread back on the right track...:D
Here's a video of the infamous Crapapple Hill our Sat. group ride had to make it over this past weekend.
I would say a ride is "hilly" if we have maybe 2 or 3 of these on a 70+ mile route sprinkled with rollers and the typical triple digit temperature during summer in Texas.
https://vimeo.com/185250101

Did all those guys just have road bikes, caliper brakes, skinny tires..on a dirt road???:eek:Thought that was illegal...or sumethin..

Sorry, being a smartass..yup, I know..rode my Merckx/Deltas on a really beautiful dirt road day before yesterday..stopped and it was so quiet...just birds..cloudy, calm, quiet..

[weisan]

Did all those guys just have road bikes, caliper brakes, skinny tires..on a dirt road???:eek:Thought that was illegal...or sumethin..

Sorry, being a smartass..yup, I know..rode my Merckx/Deltas on a really beautiful dirt road day before yesterday..stopped and it was so quiet...just birds..cloudy, calm, quiet..

old pal, or should I call you oldass? :D
You are right! Most, if not all, of the (older) riders are on modern plastic bikes I guess we need all the help we can get. I am usually the only one or two riding steel (the other pal is on a coupled waterford, passed him on the way up in this video) and pushing wider (lower press.) tires. It may appear so but we are not riding on dirt and we seldom do...like I said, this is an older group mostly retirees, and we don't like taking risk with broken bones...just about the biggest risk we would take is having to deal with dogs ;)

yes...I know what you mean...the calm and the quiet. I took the next day off SUnday from riding with the group and did a solo ride on my MX Leader. It was very peaceful. I even have time to stop and pick up a few things.

http://forums.thepaceline.net/showpost.php?p=2053673&postcount=133

[justaute]

Was at my sister's wedding in Utah a couple of weeks ago. Went on an MTB ride with my now BIL in Park City. Climbed about 1,000 ft in less than 3 miles -- kicked my derriere. The hardest part was my lungs -- just couldn't breath fast enough. And, the rock gardens on the climb made it even worse. On the way down, now that was fun.

I actually grew up in Utah, but have been away ~20 years.

[estilley]

Hill ride: any time the heart rate gets to 180+


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