Strava

Hmm, 713m... That's more than I'm going to bag in a 10-mile London commute, right?

For those south of the river, you could do 24 reps on the hill in Greenwich Park per day (if you don't die of boredom first). I am sure someone will come along with a Swain's tally before too long.

My commute is about 60m of climbing. I'd have to ride it 6x before I got to that. 100mi/day of Uxbridge Road for the duration? I don't finky so.

Regents park morning training. 8am - 9.30am: Does anyone know of a road group that ride at these times during the week?

i/ A sense of Right & Wrong
ii/ The fear of God™
iii/ Self respect
iv/ Any discernible grace

...mountainbikers will be all over it.

For those south of the river, you could do 24 reps on the hill in Greenwich Park per day (if you don't die of boredom first). I am sure someone will come along with a Swain's tally before too long.

Swains is more or less 70m. I've done ten reps in not much more than an hour, but bollocks to doing that every day.

Swains x 10 a couple of times a week at most ! Every day would be too much fun ;0)

You'd be well sorted if you were working in that caff up Snowdon

http://app.strava.com/segments/701786

It's a damn tough challenge. You'd still have to ride that segment 36 times.

Just realised I'll be spending three and a half days mountain biking in Wales during that period. I reckon there's a small chance I could do the total once - you have to do it three times for the challenge.

Just take three flights between now and then, turn your gps on, and hope it doesn't redirect the plane onto your last ride route. High beech in a 737 anyone?

What is preventing someone from just faking their gpx / tcx to get the pressies?

I've said to much.

[code]echo "

      <Time>2012-03-02T00:8:30Z</Time>
      <AltitudeMeters>1.000000</AltitudeMeters>
    </Trackpoint>
    <Trackpoint>
      <Time>2012-03-02T00:8:40Z</Time>
      <AltitudeMeters>10000.000000</AltitudeMeters>
    </Trackpoint" 

2marchcommute.tcx[/code]

Love it

Just take three flights between now and then, turn your gps on, and hope it doesn't redirect the plane onto your last ride route. High beech in a 737 anyone?

I love the idea of a 737 buzzing Clapham Common. That'd get the yummy mummies tutting even louder than usual.

2 Rides I've just done and RidewithGPS & Strava have a WILDLY different elevation gain. Should I assume an average of each reading, or is one known to be more accurate on the whole?

It's a big difference -
http://app.strava.com/rides/4650543 has 529ft, whereas RWGPS has 1075
http://ridewithgps.com/trips/528789

The 2nd ride is roughly the same % difference too
http://app.strava.com/rides/4668846 has 2042ft, whereas RWGPS shows 3862
http://ridewithgps.com/trips/528788

Is the data from a garmin unit?

A Forerunner 205. I know both rides should have come to about 10-15% more than they did, based on mapping the routes out on several other sites beforehand, but I also know it was nowhere near 3800ft.

Time to get an 800 maybe, but would the increased accuracy warrant the expense?...

Your Forerunner has no barometric altimeter. This means the data (rather than being recorded by the unit) is calculated referencing other sources.

This is from Garmin Connect.

What are Elevation Corrections?
Elevation Corrections cross reference the horizontal position (latitude/longitude) provided by the GPS with elevation data that has been acquired by professional surveys. When corrections to elevation data are made, each trackpoint of your activity now contains the elevation from the web service, not the elevation provided by your GPS device.

I've found Elevation Correction to be fairy accurate, but the elevation of your ride varies between Not Much and Fuck All.
It's not uncommon for it to be tens of metres off, and hundreds off over long rides.

An Edge 500 is the cheapest Garmin with an altimeter AFAIK.

My guess is that one of them uses elevation data from the gps while your out on the ride, and the other just gets the data from google once you've uploaded the route.

You might be able to figure it out by repeating the rides. Google derived height should be the same, but the gps one might vary.

4th on pentonville road speed trap whilst fixed 52/17 seems a little odd. surely someone on a carbon road bike has bossed it at 60kph+

bike material does not dictate speed.
/second on ccw lap of regents park with an aluminium fixed

bike material does not dictate speed.
/second on ccw lap of regents park with an aluminium fixed

Bloody hell, that's impressive. What's the bike? and what gear are you running to get that average speed?!

Just had the same sodding deal with my first lap of Box Hill and back...

Strava says +2091ft...
http://app.strava.com/activities/4735486

RideWithGPS says +2864...
http://ridewithgps.com/trips/530459

and I'm pretty sure todays ride was far closer to the higher "GPS-timate" this time.

At this rate there's going to be an addition to my credit card for £379.. ;)

Any tips on choosing between a 500 and an 800? (other than colour screen and OS mapping)

^^50x16
^500 has no mapping capabilities at all AFAIK, is just a fancier packaged version of the old Edge 305*. Thus makes it a good training aid, whereas the 800 will aid your exploring too. For most of my riding, boring ridden-to-death loops that I don't need nav on, I tend to just take my old 205 with for recording how fast I was at which points, my 705 only comes along if I really want nav details or if I'm focussing on cadence.
My 205 doesn't have a barometric altimeter, but I tend to ignore climbs, so not an issue.

GPS Thread >>>

*May be talking out my arse

Ah that helps... well in that case maybe I'll just circle over eBay for a few weeks until I find a decent priced 2nd hand 500 or 705. I'm sure Stonehedge will want his 205 back soon enough anyway.

Strangely in the last week my priorities for training have flipped around completely - now focusing on climbing instead of max speed.... the irony of course being that the 205 does well for speed readings but, as Dan mentioned to me, pretty shit at working out elevation!

Either way, this week my eyes have been opened to the world of gps units - and I fcuking loves it I do!

Edge 500 can load up a course for mapping (breadcrumb style) of a route done before by someone but won't get you back on if you go astray.