IMLP bike course

I've never seen them.  I'm not sure the Bears are even the toughest portions of climbing.  But, despite all the climbing, none of the grades at LP are overly harsh. 

IMO I think the hills right before the bears are harder. The hills are not all that steep it is the position of them near the end of the bike leg.

if you got to mapmyride and search in Lake Placid, NY, the course will come up.  And i think if you check the elevation profile box, it will then show you the grade.  

None of them are that steep....lots of slow gradual climbing.  The bears are fine as long as you didn't bike too hard the previous 50 some miles.  If you biked too hard and you're at mile 110, the bears might not be your friend.  

X2 on MapMyRide elevation chart. I never knew it existed, but if you select it it comes up with a nice color coded graph that you can size. If it is correct it shows Keene at a max of -6% and the bears no greater than 4%. I'm from Florida and I thought the bike course was great and not all that tough.

Don't count on mapmyride being too precise in terms of grade.

I've had rides where it shows the max grade of 5% where my Garmin shows the grades are 8% or even 10%.

As for IMLP specifically, the climb out of Placid just beyond the ski jumps is actually pretty steep. The bears aren't that bad, they're just drawn out and also come at the end when you're just ready to get off the bike.

Get comfortable descending and you can FLY down the Keene descent. I hit 55 and it was a blast.

mapmyride divides the elevation into about 75 little chunks.  On a 56 mile course, each chunk is about 2/3 mile.  And if it has 100 feet of climbing and 100 feet of descending in that mile, it will come out as 0% on the elevation chart.  Similarly, if there is 300 feet of climbing over 3000 feet, it will show 10% grade, but won't show whether that's 1500' at 20% and 1500' that is flat or whether it's 3000 feet at 10%. 

Sometime between now and 7/25/2010, I'll go through mapmyride and divide it into much smaller chunks and record the grade for each in order, which will give a much more accurate profile.  I'll post it here if anyone's interested.