Pace per gradient
Enter your flat pace and your climbing rate. The table shows what that means on a kilometre at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 % gradient – computed with DIN 33466, the same formula Peakflow uses to plan routes.
| Gradient | Ascent per km | Pace per km | Speed |
|---|
10 % gradient = 100 m of ascent on one kilometre. Descent is not included here – in a route it is computed with its own rate.
Example tours: pure moving time, ascent and descent in equal parts, descent at 1.6 times the climbing rate.
Why one pace is not enough
Someone who says "I run 4:52" means the flat. Uphill that quickly becomes 7, 9 or 12 minutes per kilometre – not because you get slower, but because the kilometre is more work. A kilometre at 20 % has 200 m of ascent. At 1,000 m per hour that alone is twelve minutes.
That is why Peakflow describes your pace with two values: your flat pace and your climbing rate. DIN 33466 combines them: the larger of the two time shares counts in full, the smaller in part (hiking one half, trail running one quarter – runners move uphill and forward at the same time).
How Peakflow learns your uphill pace
Nobody knows their climbing rate by heart. Peakflow derives it from your tours: for every recorded or imported tour the app compares your actual time with the standard estimate and finds the pair of flat pace and climbing rate that fits your times best – separately for hiking, trail running and cycling.
From 3 tours
"My pace" appears in the pace menu – initially with one shared factor for flat and uphill.
From 8 tours of varying steepness
Flat and uphill are determined separately. Fast on the flat but slow on climbs – or the other way round – is now modelled correctly.
Every route at your pace
Duration, stages, weather along the route and bus connections use your values instead of "Normal (6 km/h)".
From 20 km recorded: measured, not modelled
From your raw tracks Peakflow measures your actual pace per gradient class – flat, 5 %, 10 %, 20 %, downhill – section by section, pauses excluded. Your routes then use the measured curve instead of the model.
Bring your tours
Garmin or Strava archive, GPX files, recordings with watch or phone – everything counts. The more tours, the more accurate.
On more than 400 real running tours the mean prediction error fell from 11.3 to 9.7 percent through the separation, for cycling from 36 to 29 percent.
And the Bergmotor?
The Bergmotor is Peakflow's metric for uphill power relative to heart rate: weight times metres of ascent per second, divided by the share of maximum heart rate. It says how efficiently you climb – the climbing rate in m/h says how fast. For planning, speed is what counts; the Bergmotor tells you on your watch whether you are overdoing it ("ease off").
Frequently asked
Why is my uphill pace so much slower than on the flat?
Because uphill the metres of ascent count, not the distance. A kilometre at 10 % has 100 m of ascent – at 1,000 m/h six minutes alone, before the distance counts.
What is a good climbing rate?
Experienced hikers: 300–450 m/h. Trail runners: 700–1,200 m/h. Vertical specialists manage over 1,500 m/h. What matters is not the comparison but that Peakflow knows your value.
Do tours without a heart-rate strap count?
Yes. For the uphill pace Peakflow only needs distance, ascent and time. Heart rate is only needed for the Bergmotor.
What if all my tours are equally steep?
Then flat and uphill cannot be separated cleanly – Peakflow keeps the shared factor until flat and steep tours are included. Honest beats falsely precise.
Your routes at your pace
Import or record tours – Peakflow learns your flat pace and climbing rate and plans every route with them.
