I’m impressed that you could find somewhere to do a 35 mile ride with only 200m of climbing! I did what I thought was about as flat a 36 miler as I could think of last weekend, and that had 600m+ of climbing (and that the corrected amount of gain from my Garmin).

Last weekend was all on the road bikes – this weekend was all mountain biking.

Berkshire/Surrey/Hampshire border is pretty flat.

IME Garmins over estimate by about 50%, but I didn’t have it on yesterday. Guess it depends if its a barometric altimeter (accurate) or just one from the GPS (miles out). If you upload to mapmyride.com or similar there’s usualy an option to disregard altitude data.

IME Garmins over estimate by about 50%,

Based on what? There’s a lot of undulation you don’t realise on most roads. It is true though that GPS altitude alone is rubbish.

IME Garmins over estimate by about 50%, but I didn’t have it on yesterday.

The Garmin connect website will correct the over-calculation of ascent, and that does bring it down a lot. For last Sunday’s 36 miler, corrected climbing shows as 1917ft, but with the corrections disabled it does show as something like double that.

Given my house is at about 600ft and my ride took me down to the coast in a couple of places there was always going to be a fair bit of climbing.

hey i got a road bike to fit my 5ft small body… its a specialized Dolce….. only 44cm frame…geomatory great (womens )….
all i need to learn now is how to use the gears :wink:…tiny little switch to go up through the gears and like a brake handle that you flick sideways to change down through the gears…wierd…different to the mtb lol…
anyway happy speeding for me 😉

Did a “long” training ride for Cornwall Tor this weekend – 5500 ft climbing and 90Km in 3.30 ride time – pretty pleased with that as not lost much fitness over the winter – Started in dullness and wind with a few spots of rain and then into lovely sunshine – Zoned out till the last 10km and got chatting to 2 guys also gonna do the Cornwall Tor – small world!

I was sceptical of the darkside at first, until I got one on the Cycle-to-Work scheme.

Now I love the simplicity of a single speed road bike 🙂

The altitude is usualy OK, its the error that builds up, so it could be accurate +/- 10m which is as good as any barometric altimeter will ever achieve, but it wil fluctuate hing +/-10m at a relatively high frequency, where a barometer will be pretty steady. So when riding on the flat it’s adding the error onto the total every time it takes a reading. Always seems fairly consistent though, so 1000m indicated climbing is near enough always 660m actual climbing measured on an OS map.

Singlespeed road bike ..
Now the odd-bods are looking to get attention off the roadies!

Beards, flowery shirts, long socks, pasy white hairy legs .. all pushing a road bike up the hills!!

ALL bikes are ace!

BTW, contact a Cannondale dealer for the cable guide from a CAAD anything. They have an extended tube which carries the cable further around the bb.

all pushing a road bike up the hills!!

Who says we push 😉

( Actually, I lie – changed a 16T freewheel for 17T, as my legs aren’t quite strong enough…. YET! )

Cheers, I’ll try Evans then, don’t think anyone else round here stocks them.

Are you not scared riding on the road? I worry about cars.

yeah its pretty scary some times (get out nice an early though 6ish) 😉

On the B roads and stuff I drive on all seems a bit close to me!

Even the pros were pushing up the final climb of the Pais Vasco (Tour of Basque Country) yesterday. Mental stuff.

Even the pros were pushing up the final climb of the Pais Vasco (Tour of Basque Country) yesterday.

Vid link?

so 1000m indicated climbing is near enough always 660m actual climbing measured on an OS map.

What makes you think the OS map is accurate?

A gps with barometer used on a road provides higher resolution data than you can derive from an OS map. Small undulations (as has been mentioned before) which fall between contours on an OS map will be measured by the GPS, but not on the map.

You could compare it against a high res DTM (e.g. http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/) and state that it isn’t accurate, but not against OS map data.

41 miles for me this Saturday on a Singlespeed Langster, out with some Friends from the local Triathlon club 😀
Cant wait until my C2W voucher comes through and I can collect my new Cube HPC Carbon….
Really looking forward to some nice quiet sunny miles straight out of the door 8)

I’m impressed that you could find somewhere to do a 35 mile ride with only 200m of climbing!

That sounds like where I live, in fact most of my <45 mile routes have less than 200m of climbing. The most climbing I’ve done on road ride is 1600m but I had to ride 80 miles for that, cracking ride but it damn near crippled me.

Here’s the video. Walking in evidence at 7:40 but worth watching the whole vid.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4TGsbA76w[/video]

ealine anne – yey, that’s the same as mine! it was the only bike that I could find that fitted my 5 foot nothing size 🙂 Lots of people said that at my height I wouldn’t be able to have 700 wheels, but I don’t have any problem with toe overlap, do you?

I’ve also now got the smallest sized specialized tricross as a touring bike – the frame size is fine (not quite as good as the Dolce), but I really notice the difference in having ‘unisex’ rather than women’s specific bars – it’s pretty difficult to ride in the drops and the reach to the brakes isn’t that easy.

but I really notice the difference in having ‘unisex’ rather than women’s specific bars – it’s pretty difficult to ride in the drops and the reach to the brakes isn’t that easy

And so begins the journey of trying to make your road bike fit perfectly…!

Road biking is hard. I’ve said it before but there is nowhere to hide when you are on one. MTB (I know racing is hardcore) is always more social I find, you get to the top of a hill, wait for the group to form up, someone gets a puncture….on the road its just go go go until your legs are empty.

Been injured and off the bike for 2 months, havent ridden more than 2.5hrs since the autumn, did Essex Spring Lambs sportive at the weekend (great event btw, well done the organisers) in an effort to fast-track the recovery fitness. 150km in 5:23 incl a puncture, last hour my legs we’re shot and I’d lost my mates and was on my lonesome into a headwind. Brutal.

Road biking is hard. I’ve said it before but there is nowhere to hide when you are on one

Apart from coasting the decents or rolling gently along.. decents and singletrack on the MTB being a bit more.. breathless 🙂

Molgrips thats all true, and is why I prefer MTB. MTB more fun but a big day on one can be a full body bruising. Road is just an endless grind…..can be good too, I did really enjoy flying along in a small group for the first 4hrs. After that, was purgatory…..

Yeah there’s certainly a huge masochisic streak running through the roadie community. Where else would you find people talking in such enthusiastic terms about pain and suffering?

You’re obviously not a Catholic…..

Lol 🙂

Recovering from a bad knee injury so wont be able to off road for a while yet. Took delivery of my new Trek 1.5 Triple yesterday. Managed about 3mls on it yesterday with my 8 yr old son in tow behind on his MTB.

May not sound like much but considering the year i have had so far, this is a massive step. Managed a 6mls commute to work today and same gonna happen tonight.

I am just crossing my fingers that by June/July i have enough strength to do these sunny rides of 50/60/70kms. Amazing the feeling of speed you get compared to the mtb

Having just put some proper road pedals on my Supersix, what a difference! Looking forward to some long rides this summer.

I have almost completed the roadie fashion process.

Just leg shaving to go 😉

Grade 1 buzz cut, much less effort, similar result.

Shaved my legs last summer, and while its ‘better’ it’s in the same league as a king headset, not quantifiable and probably not real. Only this time it needed more maintenance.

hi sue..yeah was out riding yesterday on the ‘Dolce’.. found a big steep hill to fly down quite a long steep hill at that, and getting used to the drop handlebars is quite hard and just about reaching the brakes (so much different to MTB riding. 😉 trying to get used to the gear shifting too (thats alot different than my MTB too -im aslow learner with these roadie gear shifting systems (lol) ah well only my second ride so far so hopefully will get the hang of it too.. got a bit of neck ache yesterday flying down th steep hill…different riding position too (with drop handlebars…hope i master it soon 😉

oh ps : i got my first ‘hello’ from another roadie yesterday (that was nice :wink:…..they not all too bad then…. 😉 😈

Even the pros were pushing up the final climb of the Pais Vasco (Tour of Basque Country) yesterday. Mental stuff.

The commentary team on Eurosport reckoned that the pros were walking the top of that climb because there’d been an incident (chain off or something) which had caused them to stall and it was quicker to run over the top than try and restart a 39×25 on that gradient.

Been mountain biking since 1988 and by 2009 I was getting stale; fed up with the messing around, the constant stops, the mud and worn out components, coming home filthy and the fact that every ride seemed to end in the pub… then I got a road bike and I have hardly touched the MTB since. My biggest regret is that I didn’t mix road and MTB from the start because I’m twice as fit now and would have done a lot better in races and Polaris events if I’d been this fit. There’s nothing as exhilarating as being in a small chain gang, riding your nuts off, doing “through and off” and scaring yourself to death. My obsession with cycling has been reborn. I’m beginning to understand the skill and subtlety of road riding and I’m amazed at how my horizons have expanded – if you’d told me four years ago that I would be cycling 50 to 100 miles for fun I’d have laughed at you. Now my cycling world is not just my valley and local fells but way beyond them and into the next county as well. I love it. Still enjoy the MTB but that’s just for the craic with mates.

This thread is killing me – really want a road bike but no means for one at the moment 🙁

If only work would do C2W i could get myself a nice road bike to make my commute a more pleasant and faster experience.

I thought C2W wasnt the big deal it used to be. With the final payment now a chunk of its value are you not better off getting a discount up front on the bike?

I got 15% off mine without too much hastle

elaine anne, mrs blobby is considering a dolce. Our LBS is getting one in. Which one did you get? How you getting on with it? What size did you get? Any photos?

fed up with the messing around, the constant stops

Those two are optional 🙂

Elaine-anne – if you can’t reach the brakes well on the drops, you can fettle the position of bars and levers to help with this. It can be a a bit of a game though.