Ride Library - Phenomenal job!

  • Home
  • Ride Library - Phenomenal job!
11 replies [Last post]
Anonymous's picture
Anonymous

Congrats to Tim et al on a superb job with the ride library - URL in this week's weekly e-mail. This should definitely encourage more of us (incl. myself) to lead rides in 2004.


Anonymous's picture
Carol Wood (not verified)
An amazing resource

Timothy, Bob, Peter, and everyone else--thanks for this monumental effort!

Anonymous's picture
Jay (not verified)
Awesome

Tim, Peter et al,

Incredible job on the Ride Library. Well worth the wait after all. What a great resource and a masterful job at putting it all together. Huge kudos...

Anonymous's picture
ScottD (not verified)
Incredible contribution

An amazing job and an incredible resource. This will certainly be the envy of most any bicycle club or cyclist, anywhere, period.

Anonymous's picture
Timothy McCarthy (not verified)
Thanks

"Thanks for the kind words. I would like to thank Robert Gray, Peter O'Reilly, Hank Schiffman, Fred Steinberg and Carol Waaser for their help in pulling the new Ride Library together. I would also like to thank all the people who contributed rides.

As Robert points out the Ride Library remains a work in progress. It will grow and evolve as we get feed back and further submissions. I'd like to encourage B and C level ride leaders to submit more rides. I'd especially like to see more rides that explore New York City--ones that may not go so far afield but explore the scenic, the fascinating, the historic--whatever-- about the city. If you have a ride to submit send it to [email protected] or Robert Gray.

Thanks."

Anonymous's picture
Robert Gray (not verified)
Ride Library NOT FINISHED

We still need your ride routes, particularly shorter ones for B & C rides.
Better something not perfect rather than nothing.
Thanks for YOUR help.

Anonymous's picture
hannah (not verified)
a B cue sheet?

What make a cue sheet B or C specific? Couldn't any ride be a B or C ride if done at the appropriate pace? I am a B and sometimes C rider and found plenty of cue sheets of interest in the fab new library.

hannah

Anonymous's picture
Tom Laskey (not verified)
a B & C Q sheet

"What Bob Gray asked for was ""Shorter [cue sheets]for B & C rides.""

I don't see where he was making any distinction between B & C, he just asked for more cue sheets."

Anonymous's picture
Carol Waaser (not verified)
Check the Ratings

"Hannah, you make a good point, although I doubt many C or even B riders are going to do a ride in excess of 100 miles that's rated 5. But there are certainly routes that are labeled A that many B riders and some C riders would enjoy. Likewise, there are some 40-50 mile B/C routes that A riders can use as off-season rides when the weather is less inviting.

We had an interesting discussion about how to rate the rides. For instance, what might feel like a ""5"" to a C rider might feel like a ""4"" to a B rider and a ""3"" to an A rider. So we decided to use a single rating system with distance and terrain being the primary factors. Thus most of the B/C rides are rated 1 or 2 with some 3's. The A/B rides tend to be in the 3 or 4 range and the 5's are pretty much restricted to the longest, hilliest A rides.

It would be great to have some feedback as to whether people think the ratings are a good way to judge a ride and if the current ratings are accurate. Work in progress...."

Anonymous's picture
Hank Schiffman (not verified)
I agree with Carol...

When you consider distance and difficulty of terrain as the 2 factors that determine ride rating, the problem faced by B and C riders doing the 4 and 5 rated A rides probably would come down to time. With proper gearing we can all do the hills. But some stronger riders can ascend climbs faster than weaker riders. The same goes with distance. So a long route and/or hilly route will eat up daylight. When you add other factors such as few or no bailouts or a complicated cue sheet and a proclivity towards longer breaks, the slower rider will have less wiggle room to make it home by dark.
An interesting C ride is Fred's Beacon to Poughkeepsie via Indian Mountain. There are a number of short, steep hills but it is short. Perhaps it is even too short for a B ride unless you don't mind a poor train time to cycling time ratio.

Anonymous's picture
Robert Gray (not verified)
NYCC Ride Library Introduction

"Here as some things that were discussed in committee about the NYCC Ride Routes Library that will better explain the goals and details of the library.

1. New York Cycle Club organizes recreational bicycle rides on roads in the metropolitan New York area for riders of wide-ranging abilities.
2. Most routes for the rides begin and end at the boathouse in Central Park but routes may start elsewhere and may begin and/or end with a train or subway ride.
3. The ride library contains routes developed by club members.
4. Routes may contain errors, road conditions may change, and suggestions for improving routes are welcome.
5. The ideal routes library for bicycle rides would be a map that showed all the roads and streets in the metropolitan area that are suitable and attractive to someone traveling on a bicycle.
6. The suitable routes for bicycle travel are those that are safe because they do not have high speed motor vehicle traffic, do not have a lot of motor vehicle traffic of any kind, and do not have surfaces that are dangerous.
7. The attractive routes for bicycle travel are those that are interesting, scenic, and lead to an experience of distinctive environmental quality.
8. The routes in the library employ as many suitable and attractive and attractive roads and streets as possible but occasionally it is necessary to use an unattractive or even unsuitable road in the route because such roads require great distances to avoid.
9. Routes are usually referenced by a destination but the point of bike rides is not just to reach a destination but to make the whole ride experience rewarding.
10. The destination is most often the point on the ride most remote from the start.
11. The routes are assigned suggested ride styles A, B, C which relate to their length, speed and difficulty with ‘A’ style rides more lengthy, fast and difficult and ‘C’ style rides less fast, lengthy and difficult.
12. A route is designated only as A if it is best traveled in an A style where scenic values are not emphasized and the roads are suitable for faster paceline riding. A route is designated only as C if it has a lot of turns and uses roads that are not suitable for paceline style riding.
13. The routes are assigned difficulty ratings which are based on the total vertical gain, the steepness of the vertical gain, and the total distance of the ride.
14. As an approximation for judging the difficulty of a route, the most important factor is the total vertical gain. Level 1 routes have less than 2,000 feet; Level 2 routes less than 3,000 feet; Level 3 routes less than 4,000 feet, Level 4 rides less than 5,000 feet and Level 5 rides more than 5,000 feet.
15. All routes have cue sheets which describe the street names, distances, and direction changes along the route.
16. Some routes have overall maps and some routes have profiles which show the location of topographic changes along the route.
17. Some routes have Excel and/or Word files available for downloading and editing.
"

Anonymous's picture
Banana Guy (not verified)
Bravo, Bravo, Bravo

Ride Library is a beautiful thing.

cycling trips