The rankings so far ... and a BIG change

 I thought that there were enough climbs in the bag to make a rankings table meaningful, so after 16 out of the 26 hills this is the list in order of the steepest.

As you can see, my very own Prospect Place - the genesis of this entire challenge - is clear and away in the Number One spot. Hagg Hill is running a bit behind, but then there are a cluster of hills around 13 or 14%. Twentywell Lane is the one languishing in last place, which is a big surprise as it was one of my original "big four". Of course, this is purely in order of the steepest. Later I will try to assess which were the toughest climbs, and I suspect there will be quite a different look to this table.

Now, there is an ulterior motive to showing this table. This is how it stands according to the statistics calculated by Strava. However, as I said in my previous post; the recordings for Fox Hill were clearly wrong on Strava. As you can see, it sits right down in the table, just fifth from bottom place, but there is simply no way that could have been just a 10% gradient.

I did a little research, and what I found is that Strava is pretty accurate overall. In terms of recording distance and elevation, there are few apps that can rival its accuracy. However, it is designed for cyclists and runners who routinely travel many kilometres in a single ride or run - not for recording the very short distances that some of the climbs on this list are. Strava has a tolerance of around 10m in distance recording (and that is at each end), so the distance of a climb could be out by 20m. It also seems to suffer when climbs don't cross more than one elevation line (this is the line on maps to show elevation in 5m increments). For very short climbs, this can have a significant effect on the gradient, which obviously is a combination of both distance and elevation.

Looking at lots of mapping websites and apps, as well as altimeters, I struggled to find any that gave a clear and accurate picture. One of them actually suggested Fox Hill was a zero elevation climb!!

However, I eventually concluded that I needed to find pages that specialised. Google Maps seemed to be the best for elevation, as it measured it in feet so hopefully gives it more accuracy. It is not so good for distance, though, as it rounds to the nearest number ending with 5 or 0 - and has a bad habit of snapping to a point of its own choosing (usually an intersection) rather than where you want it to be. The best I found for accurate distances was Plotaroute, as that allowed you to pinpoint the exact point to start and finish and recorded this to the nearest metre. So, using Google Maps for the elevation and Plotaroute for the distance I recalculated all of the gradients so far. I also decided to recalculate the average speeds, as distance obviously plays a part in that.

The new revised table was a bit of a surprise. As you can see below, despite my deepest wish for it to be Sheffield's steepest hill, Prospect Place is knocked off of its top spot!!  NNNOOOOoooo...

Here is the revised rankings of the 16 hills so far.

To be honest, this feels like a much closer representation of how I felt about these climbs. It didn't feel to me that Prospect Place was 5 degrees steeper than Hagg Hill - it is now extremely tight between them which feels right to me. Kent Road and Waller Road are also much closer, which again is exactly how I would have expected them to be.

Fox Hill has now shot up to fifth from top instead of fifth from bottom. Below that, it is pretty much unchanged, which I think is a reflection of Strava's increased accuracy over longer distances.

So, there are 10 more climbs to go. Will any of them challenge Hagg Hill for the top spot? Blake Street is the last of the "big four" and I think will be the main contender for that coveted number one spot. Will any of other climbs make a surprise entry like Prospect Place, or challenge for the secondary title of Sheffield's toughest climb?

We will soon see...