Grade-Adjusted Pace Calculator

About this calculator

Grade-adjusted pace (GAP) converts the pace you actually ran on a hill into the pace you would have needed to run on flat ground to produce the same physiological effort. Running uphill costs more energy per mile than the raw pace suggests, while running downhill (past a certain gradient) can actually cost more effort too, since braking forces on steep descents add their own metabolic cost — GAP models both effects using research-derived cost curves (commonly based on Alberto Minetti’s running-economy studies) rather than treating hills as a simple linear penalty.

Trail runners and coaches rely on GAP to make sense of pace data on routes with constant elevation change, where raw pace numbers are nearly meaningless for judging effort or comparing splits across different sections of a course. It’s the same underlying model that platforms like Strava use to normalize hilly segment times, letting a runner compare a hard hill effort against a flat-road effort on a fair, effort-equivalent basis.