This Runner’s Tool Quickly Measures the Slope of Any Hill
I’ve written before about why hill repeats are a great thing to add to your running routine and how to get started. But one of the hardest aspects is finding the perfect hill, or even knowing how steep that hill is. A tool I recently started using makes this super easy.
The tool is officially called On the Go Map , but you can easily find it by its name, How Far Have I Run? To use it, click the start and end points of your hill. (I use the walking icon, which snaps the path to pedestrian roads and trails, but you can also draw straight lines if you prefer.)
You can use this tool to measure the distance and elevation of any running route — like the free version of MapMyRun — but when it comes to your favorite hill, all you have to do is create that mini route that goes up your hill, then click the elevation icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen. (It looks like a mountain.) Then a panel will open at the bottom of the screen showing the overall slope of the hill as a percentage.
This percentage is the same as what you would see if you chose the incline on a treadmill. 1% or 2% would be a very gentle hill, a smooth incline. My favorite “I’d like to die repeating hills today” hill is 8%, and anyone who regularly goes above 10% is a certified maniac. Most treadmills in gyms have a maximum incline of about 12%.
In the example image at the top of this article, I’ve selected a section of hill at a local park. On the Go Map helpfully tells me how long that segment is (0.17 miles, or a little less than a lap of a quarter-mile trail) and how much elevation I’ll gain climbing it (85 feet). To see the percentage grade, look in the upper-right corner of the elevation panel. This hill has a 9.5% grade.
If you haven’t found the perfect hill to measure yet, click the menu icon and select “terrain” as the map style. Any road that crosses multiple contour lines will be steep. Move around until you find a promising hill, then measure it.