It’s difficult to convey how tough a ride really was using numbers alone. Longer, hillier, and faster rides are obviously harder, but your mental and physical state also plays a huge part — and that’s something you can’t easily measure. And let’s not forget the weather, extremes of which can seriously affect the ‘grit’ required to endure the work.

Still, one number many cyclists come to recognise as important is the total climbing over a given distance. For instance, a 50-mile ride with 5,000 ft of ascent will test many riders. That ratio — about 1,000 ft per 10 miles — makes a handy rule of thumb for judging how hilly (and therefore how tough) a ride might be.

I started by making a table of my rides, showing distance, elevation, and climbing ratio. But it soon struck me that this ratio alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Two rides might share the same 1,000 ft per 10 miles — say, 10 miles with 1,000 ft versus 100 miles with 10,000 ft — but they’re clearly not equally tough.

So I came up with a new formula that considers both the ride length and the climbing ratio, and I’ve updated my table to use this improved measure of overall difficulty. It’s not perfect but gives a better idea of how tough the ride was. Due to the aforementioned ‘unmeasurables’, some very tough rides I remember are quite a way down the list; in many cases this was due to my fitness levels not being at their peak at the time. Alpe d’Huez, Col du Porte, Col de Tende, Col du Petit Saint Bernard come to mind. Although in all those rides, the weather and dehydration played a part as well.

By default the table is sorted with the ‘tough’ rides first. You can click on the column headers to sort by distance or elevation instead.