Monday 6 August 2007

Mountain Mama High--but how high?

Further to my blog entry on the Mountain Mama ride, I have run the results from my Garmin bike computer through three different analytical software programs and in terms of altitude gain this is what they say:

The Garmin 305: 3170 m (10,400 feet)
Garmin Training Center: 3041 m (9974 feet)
MotionBased: 3236 m (10,616 feet)
SportTracks: 2232 m (7323 feet)

This gives a variation of 1000 m, or near 3,300 feet. Dropping the SportTracks figure as just so far off it has to be wrong (and it appears from the SportTracks site that there are issues with elevation recording), we are left with an average of 3149 m (10,331 feet). This is a lot of climbing for seven hours of riding but here's the Big Question: what is the actual altitude gain? The organizers show a gain of 13,700 feet, or 4157 m, for the 100 mile version of Mountain Mama. Hmmmm. Of course, I guess I should go with their number.

4 comments:

Will said...

Leslie

Here's the issue with Sporttracks

It's default setup call anything between -3% and + 3% flat and ignores elevation gain

Therefore you are missing ascent on the non steep parts of the day.

To FIX:

Go to Settings
Select Analysis
Select "Edit Climb Zones
Make the "Flat zone end at 0.01%

Separately be aware of using Motionbased Gravity tool to correct data there - its crap.

Bottom line I love Sporttracks (once the elevation is corrected)

Will

Will said...

Additionally,

I do a lot of climbs that start at the bottom and only go up - thus I KNOW exactly the altitude gain before I climb. I find that the Garmin data in Spotrtracks is the most accurate and that Motionbased usually overstates.

Will

I would guess you did a little over 10,000 (HUGE RIDE!!!! NICE) and not stress too much

Sprocketboy said...

Will:

There are long and intense discussions on the Sportracks forum about elevation correction, so it is obviously of great interest to everyone. I will make the change you suggest. But I still think the Mountain Mama folks have short-changed me...

Will said...

Leslie

Make the correction I suggest and the Sporttracks problem disappears

I found the solution on the forum and as I said, experience on climbs where I know the ascent says Sporttracks is pretty darn accurate.