My Strava Climbing Number

By John Swindells 11 Mar 2023 | Comment

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The Climbing Number is the greatest number of days that you've ridden amount of elevation gain.
So, if you've managed 100 or more days with at least 100 feet of climbing on each day, then your number is 100.
If you've only managed 65 or more days of climbing at least 65 feet, then your score is 65.
Many thanks to James Adams for coming up with the idea of the Climbing Number!

Like the Eddington Number, it's an interesting self-improvement statistic, but is quite difficult to calculate - so this is the Strava-based tool that does it for you!

Need more background information? Read more about the Climbing Number, plus some all-athlete charts.

Other tools available:
»My Strava Eddington Number
»My Strava Segments
»Going the distance on Strava

To get started:

14 Comments

by Greg on 02 March 2024

Hey John, love the site, love the tools. Could you possibly add and All Ride to climbing like the Eddington # for distance? Thanks!

by John Swindells on 09 March 2024

Hi again Greg - I've added the "All Activities" tab.

by Witzo on 13 July 2023

Hello John. My climbing E number is displayed in feet. When I try to change it to metric, it still displays as imperial. Also, your link for the change says " Switch to metric (feet) " Maybe the word in brackets suggests the problem?

by John Swindells on 17 July 2023

Ah, there was still a problem with the link. Try it now please!

by Jeffrey Ott on 04 May 2023

I really like the "in the top xx percentage" because if you snooze you loose, particularly at this time of year I suspect, as others in the group increase their climb number your ranking slides!

by John Swindells on 04 May 2023

Yes indeed! Of course, it gets exponentially harder to increase your number, but that's all part of the fun! 😉

by Jeffrey Ott on 04 March 2023

I am really enjoying the challenge of increasing my ride climb number, curious to see the top percent figure as per other Eddington type stuff. Is that possible to calculate and display?

by John Swindells on 11 March 2023

Hi again Jeffrey, I've added it here: Calculate your climbing number. For cycling, most people have a metric number (metres) of around 115 and an imperial number (feet) of around 170.

by d coy on 23 September 2021

so I have an issue with my watch no collecting the correct elevation, so I need to manually update every strava entry to use strava data to correct that. Does this use the strava elevation or the GPS data that my watch incorrectly recorded?

by John Swindells on 24 September 2021

Hi, and thanks for your question. When you update an activity on Strava, that should automatically update it in my records too - as long as authorisation criteria are met. If you'd like me to check, please post a couple of example Strava activity URLs where you've updated the elevation.

by Alan Smith on 12 September 2018

I think this is great, I have a very lowly number, because I have a lowly number of rides, it's great to see it increase each time I go out, but I know once I get to around 250 which could be several years off it will then be harder to get it to increase. I only ride MTB on trials & canal sides so have to go hunting for hills/slopes

by John Swindells on 19 September 2018

That's great to hear, Alan. Keep hunting out those climbs!

by Doug on 13 December 2017

Love the climbing number John. Although I've only been on Strava for just over a year, the climbing number gives me something else to keep me motivated to do rides with a certain elevation. There's a local chap who has been on Strava for five years and has a climbing number of 880 metres, so he is a bit of an inspiration for me as is the climbing number concept itself. Thanks for providing it.

by John Swindells on 13 December 2017

Hi Doug, thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear that this climbing number is motivating you to hit the hills.

by Steve O on 09 April 2017

@Huggy & @Alan Thompson

True at first, but I'm up to close to 700. Getting to 1000 (imperial) is going to take some effort.

by Joris on 01 February 2017

Great addition, John! Also here it might be interesting to see in which bottom/top percentage of all other riders you are....

by Alan Thompson on 19 January 2017

I think the equation needs adjusting. For most people the number will simply be the number of days they rode their bike.

by John Swindells on 24 January 2017

I'm not sure how I could adjust it without it getting confusing. Dividing by 10 might work, but we'd be dealing in units of decimetres and decifeet (!). The current formula certainly has merit for riders with a lot of miles (and hills) under their belts, so maybe less experienced riders should stick to the Eddington Number? I don't know.

by Tony on 17 January 2017

Thanks - another very useful summary measure. Love the option to 'switch to metric'. Mine is 1071 imperial and 605 metric. (I live in the hills!)

by John Swindells on 24 January 2017

Wow, good work Tony! I have a metric number of 275, and am 50 off 300 - so have a bit of a wall to climb ;)

by Peter on 17 January 2017

Interesting idea John, but I'm not sure that the choice of units works, although the metric version (metres) is a bit more useful than feet.

The other thing is that elevation gain is a very unreliable measure: I've been on bunch rides where the variation can be /- 20% between people who've ridden the exact same course.

by Kevin Morice on 17 January 2017

I am with Huggy, very much like the swim eddington number (1 or 2 unless you are a full time swimmer and anything above 4 you are a freak) this one has no real value. It is basically just a count of how many rides you have done that aren't entirely downhill. Even my mostly donwhill 7-mile ride to work clocks in over 100ft of climbing.

by Huggy on 16 January 2017

Hmm... not sure about this one is anyone's climbing number, in feet especially, significantly different from just days out on bike? Mines 49 in ft or meters difficult not to increase that by 1 every time I go out.

by John Swindells on 16 January 2017

It's a bit of an experiment. I guarantee that it will get progressively more difficult to increase your "Climbing Number" as you do more rides!

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My Strava Climbing Number

14 Comments

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