Ride Ratings
Where we have information, we provide a "difficulty" rating for each days ride. This is based on a two factor formula which takes into account the distance and the cumulative climbing for the day. A certain number of points are assigned for each kilometer and the same number of points are assigned for each 10 meters of cumulative climbing. In our experience, most riders would generally describe the ratings as follows:
Rating |
Description |
5.0 and above |
"Legbreaker" |
4.2 to 4.9 |
Very hard |
3.4 to 4.1 |
Challenging |
2.0 to 3.3 |
Hard enough |
Less than 2.0 |
Thank God |
To give you a better quantitative idea of the rating system results, here are various combinations of distances and climbing and the resulting "ratings":
Tour/Day |
Distance (miles) |
Climbing (feet) |
Rating |
Corsica Beast/4 |
85 |
9,000 |
5.5 |
Corsica Beauty/1 |
70 |
5,422 |
3.7 |
Slovenia/3 |
49 |
5,556 |
3.3 |
Croatia/1 |
43 |
4,917 |
2.9 |
Croatia/3 |
31 |
3,664 |
2.2 |
Spain/2 |
40 |
4,664 |
2.8 |
Slovenia/5 |
20 |
3,211 |
1.8 |
Here are the averages for the tours that have been rated:
Tour |
|
Daily Average Distance (miles) |
Daily Average Climbing (feet) |
Corsica "Beast" |
4.2 |
65 |
6,914 |
Spain |
3.6 |
52 |
6,061 |
Corsica "Beauty" |
3.4 |
54 |
5,551 |
Croatia |
2.5 |
38 |
4,144 |
Slovenia |
2.3 |
36 |
3,845 |
Laos |
2.3 |
54 |
|
Indochine |
2.6 |
53 |
3,740 |
Spain