climb statistics

[JimK]

The recent discussion re Freddered's Devon challenge got me thinking again about ways to look at how to measure climbing. Total amount climbed is not all that informative. Fred suggested total climb / total distance. Yeah, better. But here is an idea:



The vertical axis is grade in %. The horizontal axis is meters.

Here's my ride today:

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/379750375

I used the "download details" button by Climb Details, to put the data in an excel spreadsheet. So then I could take each little segment of the ride and compute its grade and length. Then I sorted all those segments by grade. Then do accumulate the lengths to get the x axis position for a scatter plot.

So e.g. you can see I did a total of about 2km at a grade between 7% and 10%, and maybe half a km above 10%.

[JimK]

Here is the statistical chart:



for that ride that really did me in:

http://www.mapmyride.com/us/delhi-ny/pepacton-double-bonus-route-96862877

[JimK]

Using the power calculator at:

http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/proddiss/bicycle/bikecalc1.htm

I would estimate that my sustainable power output is maybe 110 watts. In my lowest gear my comfortable cadence is about 4.7 mph. So that means I can climb a 3.5% grade just as easily (though of course more slowly!) as riding on the level. Above a 3.5% grade, I start to struggle a bit.

So my ride today involved about 10 km of struggling. The Pepacton ride looks like about 23 km of struggling. Well, I do feel like over the couple years since that ride that I am getting a bit stronger! 

[Andre Jute]

Congratulations, Jim.

One day I was lying on the broad wall of a bridge on a country road, just relaxing while my bike cooled down after a hard ride, and an old chappie ran by, breathing heavily, his knuckles dragging the road, sweat pouring.

Round these parts you speak to people you meet on the road, and raise your finger off the handlebar in greeting if they're in cars.

So I said, "Well done, sir. You'll live to be 90."

He didn't break stride. He just cast me a sideways look that, if I weren't already flat on my back, would have put me there. He grunted, "I'm already over 90, sonny."

I like your chart's silent subtitle: "I'm going to make 90, sonny."

[JimK]

Maybe 15 years ago I wrote a little Monte Carlo simulator to play around with investment strategies, planning for retirement, etc. Probably all the outputs were so inaccurate as to be useless. But the whole exercise was useful.

For example... who knows, I might make it to 90. My Dad just turned 91. He had a spinal injury maybe 50 years ago and while they've fixed him up a couple times since then, the repairs have been far from perfect. He gets by but certainly requires a lot of support. But there are no guarantees. You can take great care of yourself and get nailed anyway, or practice all sorts of abuse and outlast everyone. You can push the odds one way or another but you can't escape them. How much of my activity now should be primarily so I can live a good life in 30 years, and how much so I can live a good life today?

Then... what's living a good life, anyway? That was a nice puzzle, with my simulator. I had a parameterized strategy. I would run a set of parameter values against say 10,000 randomized scenarios. One problem, of course, is that, however I score an individual scenario, the score for the parameter set ought to be, hmmm, the average, the median, the 20th percentile... of those 10,000 runs. But forget those weeds. What's the score?

Life just gets stranger, the longer I puzzle through it!

Being poor and healthy does seem preferable to being rich and sick! That's sure part of how I ended up with a ridiculously expensive bike... that continues to be a very enjoyable way to enhance circulation, the gasses, the fluids, the solids, to keep things moving, alive!

[John Saxby]

Great stuff, Jim -- press on regardless! Worth planning a Catskills Ride for Ageing NOMADics.  (Don't panic -- just a reflection, not a suggestion.)

Your charts & map got me thinking of climbs and descents of a few hills on the Gaspé and in Kwa-Zulu-Natal which were above 15%.  Some were shortish, others more than 1.5 kms.  We were at least rewarded with good views from the top.  On the south coast of England, there's one brute going west just outside the village of Abbotsbury in Dorset, where a sign at the bottom announces 24% (!!)  It has a lovely view back east from the top, to Chesil Beach & Portland Bill.  You'd need a proper cream tea beforehand for that one, and even with that, I reckon I'd have to push...

J.

[JimK]

Yeah John there is a lot of really beautiful riding around here! If you get down here I would love to show you some of the roads!