From 3:01 to 2:06: Why I Built TrainPace

TrainPace is built and run by Alex, a software developer and self-coached runner in Vancouver, BC. He built it during the training block that took his BMO Vancouver Half Marathon time from 3:01:00 (May 2024) to 2:06:00 (May 2025) — 55 minutes faster, after 24 weeks of structured training.

The numbers
Race	Time	Average pace
BMO Vancouver Half Marathon, May 2024	3:01:00	8:35/km (13:48/mi)
BMO Vancouver Half Marathon, May 2025	2:06:00	5:58/km (9:37/mi)

What changed

One long run per week at Zone 2/3 intensity
One speed workout per week: tempo runs, intervals, and threshold work
Easy runs about 2 minutes per kilometer slower than race pace
A km-by-km race plan built from the course elevation profile
A fueling plan from the TrainPace fuel planner: it said 3 gels, and 3 would have been enough

Why TrainPace exists

Pace calculators were buried in ads
Switching between min/km and min/mile was a pain on every site
Strava does not offer a pace calculator in its mobile app
Elevation analysis meant staring at a static chart instead of seeing grades and climbs
There was no simple way to work out how many gels a race needs

TrainPace is for self-coached runners who want to train with data without paying for a coach. Every calculator is free, needs no account, and uses published methods: Daniels & Gilbert VDOT formulas for paces and race predictions, grade-adjusted pacing from real elevation data, and carbohydrate targets from sports-nutrition research.

Other TrainPace tools

For AI agents

Every public page on this site has a Markdown mirror at the same path with a .md suffix (for example /calculator.md), and honors an Accept: text/markdown request header on the HTML URL. The calculations here are also available as callable tools through a free public MCP server — no account or API key.