Cyclists and runners in the North Texas area know that we don’t have much in the way of elevation change. There are no 4-mile hill climbs for us to train on (heck I can only think of a couple of climbs withing a 2 hour drive that are over 1 mile). This forces us to get very creative with our local “climbs” in order to get in some “hill work”. Luckily in Fort Worth we have a few more options than the folks in Dallas. Today I went out with my GPS to map all of the hills I could think of in the area in order to determine the actual distance, elevation change and average grade of our local climbs. Is Hidden Road steeper than Ranch View? How long is Rogers Road? What’s the change in elevation on Nice Hill? I’ve got all of the ones that I could think of (and had the time to ride to) below. Click on the links for directions to the hill or for the profile from my GPS.
Taking first right off Drop Time after main entrance
.70 miles – 167 ft – 4.5% avg. grade
Starting at Mont Del Drive and Park Lane
.79 miles – 156 ft – 3.74% avg. grade
Starting at Merrick and Burton Hill towards Byers.
.53 miles – 135 ft – 4.8% avg. grade
Starting at Merrick and Burton Hill
.29 miles – 134 ft – 8.8% avg. grade
Heading towards Alta Drive
.35 miles – 131 ft – 7.1% avg. grade
Starting at Bellaire Drive South
.26 miles – 126 ft – 8.8% avg. grade
Turning left on DropTime at main entrance
.38 miles – 120 ft – 6.0% avg. grade
Starting at Overton Park towards Bellaire Circle.
.17 miles – 82 ft – 9.1% avg. grade
End of Underwood Road
.12 miles – 83 ft – 13.1% avg. grade
Starting at Rogers and Colonial Drive
.26 miles – 80 ft – 5.8% avg. grade
Coming from the South
.24 miles – 62 ft – 4.9% avg. grade
Coming from the North
.17 miles – 57 ft – 6.4% avg. grade
Texas Tailwind 
Good data to have. Between Deerwood Forest and Ranchview it looks like I hit both the tallest and steepest climbs on my normal 42 mile route.
You need to add arborlawn to this. I wanted to see how much climbing I did on my hill repeats today.
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A couple more hills I’d love to see stats on…Oakmont from Bellaire to Bryant Irvin, and Kelly Road in Aledo.