FAQ - frequently asked questions about my rides

All the routes include a technical difficulty rating. The range is between 1 and 5 points and the rating with 5 points is the most demanding one. It does not mean that all sections & trails of the route are covered with the same rating. Each MTB route includes the rating of the hardest section between the all sections of the complete route. Check the photo gallery, map, overview & description of each route for more details about the sections. To get aerobic difficulty consider elevation profile, distance and technical difficulty together and upon your experience decide if the route is acceptable for you.

Any technical difficulty rating can include some short walking section, the section  where the ride is not possible and you will have to hike on with your bike. Consider the description of the route, map and photo gallery to check how long is such section.  Check bellow the images and comment to get the overview about my rating levels for technical difficulty of the mountain bike ride:

To get aerobic difficulty you have to consider, elevation gain, elevation profile, distance and technical difficulty all together and upon your experience decide if the route is acceptable for you. For the trained biker the total ascent of the ride in the amount of 2000 meters is easy but for the others even 1000 meters can be very difficult. That is the reason why I don't want to specify aerobic difficulty as the single value. 

There are two ways:

With the GPS. Some GPS units like Garmin eTrex Vista HCx use the atmosphere pressure method for recording of elevation data into tracklog but before the start the GPS unit is calibrated with the data calculated from GPS signal. Some other units  like Magellan eXplorist record the elevation data calculated from GPS signal. Both methods have some + and - but you can count on the difference in final elevation data of my profiles could be in the range of +/- 5%. Most of the GPS tracklogs have been processed with the OziExplorer and Perfils programs to get the final elevation profile including the distance data.  

With the bike comp that uses only the atmosphere pressure method for elevation data and counting of wheel turns for the distance data. In most cases I use HAC5 from CicloSport. For analysis of recorded data I have used programs CicloTour and HACtronic, both provided with the HAC5 unit.

Between GPS and bike comp methods you can expect the difference in results within the range of +/- 5%.

Regarding long solo rides when I have to make many brakes to shot the photos, the time data have been removed from the elevation profiles.

Elevation gain is the total climb in meters of the route. Elevation gain is calculated from GPS tracklog or recorded file with the bike comp. The files have been analyzed  with programs mentioned above. For GPS data I use the elevation filter of 5 meters and for bike comp the elevation filter is 1 meter. For instance the filter of 5 meters means that any climb which is less than 5 meters high will not be added into elevation gain. Regarding many factors the elevation gain value could be in the range +/- 8%.

Kml tracklog file can be opened into Google Earth. Most of the GPS units like Garmin and Magellan use their own file format. For conversion you can use OziExplorer or GPS Trackmaker (free). Than you can use the GPS manufacturer application to create the route for your GPS unit. All my GPS tracklogs are recorded with WGS84 datum.

I recommend to use kml file available for each route and than create the route in your GPS as it is explained above. Furthermore, consider the Google Earth map included in each route. Click on Map, Satellite (with or without labels) or Terrain modes. With zoom and pan options you can easy find the way how to reach the starting point and how looks some trail.

Some old military topo maps can be found here.