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Route Profiles


nathrix

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How much do you peeps know about route profiles? How is a route profile created if you have the files for the route from your device after you have ridden it?

 

Any event advertised with a route profile always gets a thumbs up from me.

 

I'm familiar with the route profiles on google earth or the online gps visualizer, but the Trans Draak 24hr MTB Quest really impressed me, the only thing missing are the gradients:

 

http://www.transdrakensberg.co.za/file/td-profile.jpg

 

What will be the perfect route profile visualization?

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Pre-race you can check out a route via something like Mapmyride - and there are other similar tools, I'm sure.

 

Post-ride, you have the log files. So pick your poison... Sporttracks, garmin Connect, also available via mapmyride, the list goes on...

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Pre-race you can check out a route via something like Mapmyride - and there are other similar tools, I'm sure.

 

Post-ride, you have the log files. So pick your poison... Sporttracks, garmin Connect, also available via mapmyride, the list goes on...

 

I think he is more referring to the detail as well i.e. water points, medics, etc

 

I mapmyride sometimes (race routes), other times I upload post ride to Garmin connect. Mapmyride is cool because you can upload it to your Garmin and ride the route from it. It also gives you elevation maps too :thumbup:

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What will be the perfect route profile visualization?

 

 

Displaying it to scale. Not condensing 400km of horizontal distance into an A4 format whilst displaying 2.2km of vertical height at 800% of the horizontal.

 

It always looks like a profile of the Himalayas to me. <_<

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Displaying it to scale. Not condensing 400km of horizontal distance into an A4 format whilst displaying 2.2km of vertical height at 800% of the horizontal.

 

It always looks like a profile of the Himalayas to me. <_<

Or at least keeping them a consistent scale. 5px per km horizontal, 5px per 10m vertical?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Displaying it to scale. Not condensing 400km of horizontal distance into an A4 format whilst displaying 2.2km of vertical height at 800% of the horizontal.

 

It always looks like a profile of the Himalayas to me. <_<

 

Yeah, but it is going to be difficult to see anything using the same scale. Lets say you use a 100km race with the difference between the lowest and highest point 1km (I know - that is a lot for local races). That would mean your y-axis would always be 1/100 of the x-axis. Therefore, if you make the x-axis 20cm to fit on a page then the y-axis should be 0.2cm?! Don't know if that is correct or if that is what you mean?

 

Another interesting thing I learned from last weekend (a bit off-topic): I used Google Maps to map us a ride from Klein Joostenberg, over du Toit's, through Rawsonville, through Villiersdorp, over Franschoek and also Hels and Google said it was 193km. We ended up doing closer to 212km! Could that be because Google Maps doesn't take into account the ascents and descents and just draws a straight line? I haven't tried putting it in MapMyRide yet.

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But how steep is that climb though?

 

Very roughly - the length of the climb looks about 5km and the ascent 170m (520 - 350m). That would give it an average gradient of around 3.4%. That is not steep, but it could have steeper parts (like the first and last third). If you know Tiekiesdraai in Cape Town: from the longer side it is almost the same gradient for about 4km.

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Another interesting thing I learned from last weekend (a bit off-topic): I used Google Maps to map us a ride from Klein Joostenberg, over du Toit's, through Rawsonville, through Villiersdorp, over Franschoek and also Hels and Google said it was 193km. We ended up doing closer to 212km! Could that be because Google Maps doesn't take into account the ascents and descents and just draws a straight line? I haven't tried putting it in MapMyRide yet.

It's much more likely something in the route wasn't right.

 

If you were to ride 200km and all you did in that time was climb and descend 10% gradient hills, the difference between the horizontal distance and the actual distance would be about 961m.

 

If the whole thing were over 20% gradient, the difference would still only be about 3km. To get a 13km difference, you'd need to be hitting 35% gradients the whole way.

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