Originally Posted by
dutret
gradient is most definitely not calculated this way.
It's a rather complicated way of doing it, but it is most definitely valid. He's just calculating the "real" run (i.e., horizontal distance) covered by the climb, and using that. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the difference between the road distance (5280 feet in the original example) and the "real run" (5256 feet) is basically insignifigant (less then 0.5%). From a math perspective though, this is probably a more accurate method.