R I D E   EL E V A T I O N S

Darren Kameyer, at dkameyer@sbcglobal.net  saves the data from his S710 Heart Rate Monitor.

How it was done: The S710 gives a tabular listing of time, heart rate, speed and altitude for each exercise recorded. I have my S710 record each of the above values at 5 second intervals. Once I downloaded the exercise file into the associated Polar software on the computer via infrared link, I copied the tabular data to the clipboard and pasted it into Excel. Once in Excel, I calculated the cumulative distance at each time interval using the _expression distance = rate x time. Then I calculated the % grade change from the previous time recording using the _expression, %grade = (altitude change / distance change) x 100. Then all I had to do was chart the data as you see it in the spreadsheets and determine average %grade from the bottom of a given hill to the top of the given hill. The polar software was helpful here as it automatically plots the ride elevation profiles and heart rate against elapsed time so that I could easily see which hills were worth calculating %grade and which hills were the most difficult based on my heartrate response.

. These are downloadable Microsoft Excel files

Note if rides are listed for more than one year that means the routes have changed and the latest year the ride is listed is the latest route. Otherwise if a ride is only listed in one year and has not been updated since that year, then the route has not changed.