On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

I just got a copy of John Summerson's new book, the Guide to Climbing (by bike) in Colorado. It's not out yet, but I was very pleased John sent me an early copy. I really like what he's doing with this series ( web site here ): small, compact guides to various cycling-friendly regions in the United States. First he did his national book, and that was perfect for learning about regions (among those covered in the book) that I'd not ridden in, or perhaps (like Colorado) had ridden in but had failed to appreciate due to the restricted route options of a large organized tour. But obviously a modest single book cannot come close to doing justice the the climbs in the full United States, and if I am going to be traveling in a specific region, say Colorado, why should I want to carry around a heavy guide which includes climbs in Vermont, North Carolina, Hawaii, and the entire Pacific coast? These regional guides are perfect for that purpose. They're small, relative...

The magazine Fiets has a formula for climb rating which is proportional to: rating = net climbing² / distance + (peak altitude - 1000 meters) / 100, where the altitude term is set to zero if the altitude is less than 1000 meters. I've already noted this altitude part is silly: it allows a flat road to have a positive rating. For the rest of this blog I'll neglect the altitude part. I already mentioned Summerson uses the same climbing and grade dependence as Fiets, although his altitude adjustment is superior.  The magazine actually normalizes this rating by 10 meters, so a climb averaging 10% for 1000 vertical meters, which my representation ranks as 100 meters, would be rated 10 (no units). Recall my formula is: rating = net climbing × ( 1 + [10 × net climbing / distance]² ) Now suppose one climb rates 1% higher in the Fiets rating than another. How would the climbs compare in my rating? Well, if they have the same grade and differ by distance, the answer is...

Fillmore Street in San Francisco: short and very, very steep.   Webcor Cycling The last time I wrote on this topic I described some of the issues with rating climbs. Here I'll describe some of the existing formulas. First a quick disclaimer. I tend to interchangably use grade and climbing/distance. By grade here I generally mean climbing/distance, even though grade is formally rise over run (not over the hypotenuse). net distance Let's start simple. One formula is distance. This seems absurd, but it's one you even hear today from commentators on bike racing. "Road xxx climbs for yyy km." Obviously distance provided difficulty, but we're interested here in the difficulty of climbing, and without considering road grade, distance is a very weak metric. net climbing Next is total climbing. As I noted climbing can be measured as net or gross climbing, but for simplicity I'll stick with net climbing. Then the total climbing is the initial a...

John Summerson's book, The Complete Guide to Climbing by Bike , is a wonderful reference to some of the best cycling climbs in the United States. But the US is obviously vast, and a national guide, while useful for planning trips, may be less useful than guides with a more regional focus. So he's started producing a regional series, as well. First was a book on the Southwest . This is really good, but is mostly a subset of the national guide, with a few more climbs added in. Still recommended. Far closer to home for me is the newly released California edition . Wow! What a resourse! If you ride in California, this is a must-buy. Even if you find one, just one climb here you weren't aware of, one gem of a climb to add to your "done that" list, the cost of the book is more than justified. And I can't imagine any rider not finding some inspiration here. Okay, now to some details. First, the route profiles... at first I was taken aback at the rela...