Discussion: What is the easiest way to estimate a hill gradient on roads? for hill repeats?

A friend asked me:
What is the easiest way to estimate a hill gradient on roads?for hill repeats?

I suppose if I had an accurate topo, just use contours and distance: change in elevation divided by horizontal distance, eg a 40 meter rise over 200 meters would be .2 or 20%, a 40 meter rise over 800 meters would be .05 or 5%.

But lacking a topo, or say nothing more accurate than a USGS or other government map, are there other techniques that might give an accurate result?

How about using barometric altimeter, for example Polar HRM?

If it's a hill that's easily accessible or which you plan to run regularly, a simple weight+string+protractor can give reasonable results. A device like the one here (4.1): http://solomon.physics.sc.edu/~tedeschi/midway/tm/... is adequate for measurement purposes.

That said, it's only effective for giving an aggregate elevation change, and requires some visibility or careful measurement.

just grab a transparent water bottle and set it on a level surface, fill it with water to half and draw a line with a black pen on it.
Measure the perimeter of the bottle with some tape and record the value P.
Go to your hill and set the bottle on the ground on a part of the slope is representative. Measure the distance from your black line to the lowest (highest) point where the water goes and record the height H.

your gradient G will be
G = (2* Pi * H)/P
Where Pi is 3.1415279....(etc).

You could take multiple values of H for different spots in the hill (say walking 20 paces uphill) so you get a clear picture of the gradient variation.

The wider the bottle, less precision is lost at higher gradients. So you can also take your bottle to your favourite/known gradient hill and mark the gradient with a red pen, so whenever you take your bottle to an unknown hill you can assess wether the new hill is steeper/less steep than the one you know.

I've taught algebra, trig, etc for over 25 years, and have never seen or thought about the problem before. What an elegant solution! Practical and simple.

You can make a transit fairly easily:

Tape or glue a protractor to a ruler. Make sure the protractor is aligned with the ruler edge.

Drive a narrow screw into the ruler at the center of the protractor (these first two steps need to be done accurately, the rest of the steps don't require any precision).

Tie a thread to the screw.

Tie a nut or some other weight to the other end of the thread.

For two person operation, you're done - just sight down the ruler and have someone else read the angle off the protractor. If you want a true DIY solution, you can mount the ruler on a tripod. Sight down the ruler and then lock the tripod head in place and read off the angle.

One obvious, but potentially overlooked technique note: make sure you sight something that is just as far above the ground as your transit. If you sight to surface of the road, you'll be cheating yourself out of 1-2m of climb.

there is no limit to the nerdiness of orienteers.

measure the altitude difference and lateral distance using google earth and work it out from there. the altitude is not very accurate in places though.

I can't picture a hill worth running repeats on where a USGS map wouldn't be a damn sight easier and more accurate than anything listed above. And you don't even have to get up from yer computer to look at one on line.

GlenT, I think he wants the radius. If you're going to be pedantic ;p make sure the black line coincides with the initial water level, and that the bottle is cylindrical...

You should of course just ask the janitor (maybe offering your gps in exchange).
http://everything2.com/node/767139

I just use g-maps pedometer and you get a nice profile of your run (or just the hill if that's all you want). I've used it to look for the steepest hill around Oxford to do hill reps on. If you want a number you still have to calculate the gain in altitude divided by horizontal distance, but that info is all on the profile.

take a 4' level out to the hill, level it off and measure from the end to the ground. If its 4' down, the hill is very very steep.

Folklore has it that the "ask the Janitor" student was actually Neils Bohr who went on to win a Nobel prize for physics.

There's only two grades of hill:

- steep
- f*** steep

I don't need any complex formulas to determine which is which. Having said this, Jose you're a genius.

Intuitively i see that the bottle works, and all the data are related - but my math skills are so poor, i can't figure out how it all fits together - would somebody mind describing it in a couple of sentences?

Sorry, it only works if you use the metric system

Here it is explained in simple terms:


Regards.

Thanks. Now that I can understand:)

look at the hill -preferably from the side.

theres websites out there like mapmyride, if you measure the hill it'll show the grade, dist ect.

An example (my hill) from www.mapmyrun.com.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CtGlQBKEXDo/SWLIj2Xq3yI/...

mapmyrun etc distance is fine, but elevation graphs/climb leave a lot to be desired compared to a map. There's a better website for climb i've heard about, can't remember what it is though...
I f I can, I go for maps and count contours.

Now that we can measure the hill, what does everyone consider a good hill for running repeats on?
What distance/time and what grade?

I've often wondered about this because the longer the up phase, the longer the recovery. Because these are repeats rather than "intervals" a long recovery isn't such a bad thing, but I wish there was a way to shorten the distance/cimb of getting back to the start. I haven't figured that out yet.

j-man, train here:

Of course! Brilliant!

I read a story in a nordic ski magazine about a Norwegian who did a hill training in which he ran to the top, and had a friend who drove him down....

I could see that, and it makes a certain amount of sense. But presumably those would be pretty substantial (long) uphills--in which case I would not be too worried about my recovery. In lieu of the driver, I would just look for a longer hill!