The participation ride 2006 - post-ride analysis and comment

The most telling statistic

Those of you who have read the account of the ride will know that Day 2 was the toughest (Stages 2 and 3). However, this hasn't come through in the stats published so far. The secret, I have discovered, lies in the total ascent of the day. This seems to be the best indicator of the 'toughness' of the day.

Interestingly, very few of the days were significantly more 'up hill' than others. This means that the fact that you freewheel down the other side of the hill is no compensation in terms of how tired you feel. It just serves to keep your average speed up.

Click on the image to see the stats. The total ascent on Day 2 was 6,460 ft. In comparison, Day 6, which included Shap, was 'only' 4,281ft. I climbed 35,500 feet in total (Mount Everest is 29,035 feet above sea level).

If you sort this data by 'Day Ascent' it puts the days in order of actual difficulty as experienced by me.

The final analysis

At last, all the details of all the stages of the trip have been posted and are available here.

There is one post per stage and each one contains:

• Title (inc start and finish location of the stage)
• A map showing the route (click to see full-size)
• A graphic showing the vertical profile of the route (click to see full-size)*
• A short narrative
• The downloadable tracklog file generated by the GPS (text format)
• A downloadable track file (Magellan MapSend format)
• Summary statistics of the stage

*All vertical profiles have the same horizontal and vertical scale to make them directly comparable.

All feedback would be gratefully received (use the comment feature).

Once again - thanks to everyone who supported me in this little project. It's been a fantastic experience.

Over and out.