Strava cat 3 climb - is it that hard?
Discussion
This is a segment on one of my normal rides...
http://www.strava.com/segments/7482939
Strava categorises this as a cat 3, but with an average gradient of only 4% (I guess the length is what does it) but although it's fairly hard work I can still get over it without too much difficulty in spite of my fairly low fitness levels. I do have the KOM, but there are two women faster than me, and it's clearly not a very well ridden route so there's no real competition.
By way of comparison this hill by where I used to live felt a lot more difficult to get over (although I do have a much better bike now).
http://www.strava.com/segments/839705
So, are category ratings misleading? Can a cat 3 be fairly easy but a short sharp cat 4 is much harder?
I need to get myself onto some 1 and 2 climbs, the problem I have is that it's hard to tell if they're road or MTB routes and I don't want to get to the bottom of a big hill and find there's only a gravel path going up it!
http://www.strava.com/segments/7482939
Strava categorises this as a cat 3, but with an average gradient of only 4% (I guess the length is what does it) but although it's fairly hard work I can still get over it without too much difficulty in spite of my fairly low fitness levels. I do have the KOM, but there are two women faster than me, and it's clearly not a very well ridden route so there's no real competition.
By way of comparison this hill by where I used to live felt a lot more difficult to get over (although I do have a much better bike now).
http://www.strava.com/segments/839705
So, are category ratings misleading? Can a cat 3 be fairly easy but a short sharp cat 4 is much harder?
I need to get myself onto some 1 and 2 climbs, the problem I have is that it's hard to tell if they're road or MTB routes and I don't want to get to the bottom of a big hill and find there's only a gravel path going up it!
Category 4 - <2 km long and <5% grade or <5 km at avg <2-3% grade.
Category 3 - <1.5 km and <10% or <10 km at avg <5%.
Category 2 - <5 km at <8% or <15 km at avg <4%.
Category 1 - <8 km at <8% to <20 km at avg <5%.
Hors Categorie - >10 km long with an average grade of >7.5% or up to 25 km long at avg >6% or steeper.
I do like long climbs, this is Burrington Combe, my nicest local climb and at 4kms, avg 5% incline, fits the cat 3 criteria nicely.
So to answer your question, a cat 3 can be short and sharp or long and gradual and a cat 3 can be steeper than a cat 1, it just wont be as long.
Category 3 - <1.5 km and <10% or <10 km at avg <5%.
Category 2 - <5 km at <8% or <15 km at avg <4%.
Category 1 - <8 km at <8% to <20 km at avg <5%.
Hors Categorie - >10 km long with an average grade of >7.5% or up to 25 km long at avg >6% or steeper.
I do like long climbs, this is Burrington Combe, my nicest local climb and at 4kms, avg 5% incline, fits the cat 3 criteria nicely.
So to answer your question, a cat 3 can be short and sharp or long and gradual and a cat 3 can be steeper than a cat 1, it just wont be as long.
Also worth noting that Strava doesn't always get it right, thanks to people using Smartphones!
If you ride a climb which nobody else has ridden, Strava will automatically create a segment. That's fine, if it is a climb, but as Smartphones don't have the barometric altimeters of the type found in dedicated GPS bike computers, they can sometimes produce false results, such as the near enough flat road outside Chessington World of Adventures being logged as a 20% gradient last time I looked!
That may or may not have happened on yours. I can't check, as Strava is currently down for routine maintenance.
If you ride a climb which nobody else has ridden, Strava will automatically create a segment. That's fine, if it is a climb, but as Smartphones don't have the barometric altimeters of the type found in dedicated GPS bike computers, they can sometimes produce false results, such as the near enough flat road outside Chessington World of Adventures being logged as a 20% gradient last time I looked!
That may or may not have happened on yours. I can't check, as Strava is currently down for routine maintenance.
The segment I posted was created by me, using data from my Garmin Edge 500 so it should be accurate (or at least better than one done on a phone). I guess an 8km climb at 4% is fairly long, if not that steep, is in theory a cat 3, I just read the thread where people are suggesting that a cat 3 on the TDF route is really hard yet this one felt easy to me and I'm far from a talented and fit athlete.
Kermit power said:
Also worth noting that Strava doesn't always get it right, thanks to people using Smartphones!
If you ride a climb which nobody else has ridden, Strava will automatically create a segment. That's fine, if it is a climb, but as Smartphones don't have the barometric altimeters of the type found in dedicated GPS bike computers, they can sometimes produce false results, such as the near enough flat road outside Chessington World of Adventures being logged as a 20% gradient last time I looked!
That may or may not have happened on yours. I can't check, as Strava is currently down for routine maintenance.
It's not just smartphones that can get confused. Temperature changes can induce significant error into the barometric altimeters on stuff like the Garmin Edge series. Like when you keep the unit indoors in the warm all day, then pop it onto the bike to ride home, in the cold. As the unit adjusts to the new ambient temperature, it throws out the pressure reading. If you ride a climb which nobody else has ridden, Strava will automatically create a segment. That's fine, if it is a climb, but as Smartphones don't have the barometric altimeters of the type found in dedicated GPS bike computers, they can sometimes produce false results, such as the near enough flat road outside Chessington World of Adventures being logged as a 20% gradient last time I looked!
That may or may not have happened on yours. I can't check, as Strava is currently down for routine maintenance.
There's a segment near me called 'M3 Climb'. Bizarrely, for a segment which runs parallel to the M3 motorway, it is categorised as a Cat 4. It is actually almost pan-flat, and whilst it may have been 'auto created', someone must surely have given it a name, which means they must have known it was a bogus climb when they named it?
I have a veritable smorgasbord of Cat 3 and 4 climbs at my immediate disposal, so I have quite a good feel for them. I find that Cat 3 climbs are almost always harder than Cat 4s, but there is some blurring at the edges. The Cat 3 I ride up on my daily commute is very short - just over a mile at 11% average gradient and I find that quite easy (I suspect because I'm just so used to it). There is another one I quite like that is 2.6km at 7%, which seems a bit harder, but is a nice even gradient. Then you get the ones that seem pretty benign on paper (2.8km at 6%), but have a mixture of shallow and steep which make it hard to get into a good rhythm. The biggest cat 4 I do regularly is 3km at 5%, but that contains a fair few steep sections and overall feels pretty similar to some Cat 3s.
yellowjack said:
There's a segment near me called 'M3 Climb'. Bizarrely, for a segment which runs parallel to the M3 motorway, it is categorised as a Cat 4. It is actually almost pan-flat, and whilst it may have been 'auto created', someone must surely have given it a name, which means they must have known it was a bogus climb when they named it?
Strava will have given it the name.It auto-created a segment on one of my rides (which I'd never have bothered creating myself!) and called it "La Garenne Climb".
I assume it just looks for the name of the hill it's on if there is one, or the name of the road and adds "climb" onto the back of that.
Gassing Station | Pedal Powered | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff