This image and its ilk bothers me to no end. This is a profile of the 9th stage of the Tour de France*.

(image adapted from letour.fr)
So I had this simple little post in mind about the Tour de France and biking and elevation and distance and it would wrap up neatly into a little Pythagorean Theorem lesson. I start looking around for nice little diagrams much like this one, showing the distance and elevation. The idea was going to be simply, “find the absolute distance the bikers travel in this particular stage.”
But it turns out these diagrams are a sham. An absolute sham. You see, the x-axis already does represent the absolute distance. Take this stage, for example. Above is the “cross section” of the stage. And here’s the actual route.

Note the exact same distance peddled. So x-axis is in actual distance peddled, not simply the horizontal distance traveled, as any proper diagramer should do. I suppose it’s more helpful for the bikers to know the absolute distance they have to travel, but it’s …. it’s….. it’s… just wrong. In retrospect, I did sort of think these slopes seemed a tad steep….
So we have a new task.