Need help on % of incline / grade

What I mean is what is the % ? or what is the grade ? and how to calculate or be able to tell. (what does grade mean anyway?)

gman0482 said:

What I mean is what is the % ? or what is the grade ? and how to calculate or be able to tell. (what does grade mean anyway?)

The grade is the gradient. In England it's normally expressed as something like 1 in 8 - which means it climbs 1ft for every 8ft travelled. So a 1 in 4 is twice as steep and fecking hard to climb on a bike. The smaller the second number the steeper the climb.

Grades expressed in percentages are the other way around, the bigger the number the steeper it is. A 25% grade means that the height climbed is 25% of the distance travelled - which would equate to 1 in 4. A 10% climb would mean that you travel 1ft up for every 10ft travelled. Of course this works in meters too if you're a metric child.

To calculate the average gradient for a climb you can use three methods:

1. If it's a steep hill there's normally a sign - just read that. :P
2. Use a fancy cycle comptuer.
3. You could use an Ordinance Survey map to get the following info: Height at the top and bottom of the climb and the distance of the road. Calculate the difference in height and divide by the length of the road.

Oh ok I see. That makes sense now, thank you much. I'ts a simple calculation to make, the only data I am missing is the bottom and top elevations, which I can retreive from the livestrong website when I map my ride. The distance, I can record on my bike comp. Good stuff 🙂

Thanks,
-Greg

Check out either Bicycle Hill Climbs | Cycle2max or Climbbybike.com - the cycling source on cols, tours and cyclo's to climb by bike

Both sites have ratings of a large variety of climbs around the world. They may have yours. If not you could add them in. You can enter times and it will even estimate your power output.

MapMyRide.com - Map your Cycling, Bike Map and Mountain Biking Routes and join our Cycling Community of Cyclists. Cycling GPS for Cycling Social Network, iPhone, Topo Maps, Elevation Profiles, GPS Support. is also good as you can map your ride 😄 and it will show you the gradient for each section of a climb.

WTF, hmmm just typed the urls in and get all that extra guff added.

Bicycle hill climbs - sounds interesting, will have to check that one out later. 🙂

Mapmyride.com is a useful one that I've used lots in the past. On the "info and tools" section on the right of the screen, make sure that 'follow roads' and 'display elevation' are checked. For climbs of more than a mile it's pretty accurate but for really short climbs it tenders to make stuff up. LOL The only downside to this site is that for rides of over 100 miles it starts really slowing down if you have the 'display elevation' checked while you plot the ride on the map. Plot first and then check the 'display elevation' option. If you join their website you can save maps for future reference and share then with others. While it does a good job of correctly showing gradient it does a less than stellar job of calculating total ascent and descent on a ride...

I would be surprised if the Ordnance Survey didn't offer something up on their website as they are the topographical map gurus of the UK...

Yes MapMyRide is great as well, I'm on that also, but I found that Livestrong.com gives me the graph of the inclines I ride (with the yellow dots that show me on the map). I didn't check out all the options on Mapmyride yet so thats my next step.

Thank You all,

-Greg

gman0482 said:

Yes MapMyRide is great as well, I'm on that also, but I found that Livestrong.com gives me the graph of the inclines I ride (with the yellow dots that show me on the map). I didn't check out all the options on Mapmyride yet so thats my next step.

Thank You all,

-Greg

There's a 'show elevation' option on Map My Ride.

Just checked out that "show elevation" on Mapmyride, but I couldn't find the option to look at specific points (hills) on my mapped out ride. It showed me the total ascent and descent, and max/min. What I was looking for was the detailed info of each hill within that ride. Livestrong brakes down each incline/decline.

Unless I'm not seeing it 😕

Ok nevermind, I'm a complete idiot. Just didn't scroll down far enough to see the graph below.... :p