---
title: "About TrainPace – Built by a Self-Coached Runner"
description: "Why TrainPace exists: a runner who cut his half marathon from 3:01 to 2:06 in a year built the free, ad-free tools he wished he had."
url: https://trainpace.com/about
---

# 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.

- [Alex on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleexwong/)
- [alex@trainpace.com](https://trainpace.com/mailto:alex@trainpace.com)

## Other TrainPace tools

- [Pace Calculator](https://trainpace.com/calculator) — training paces from a recent race result
- [VDOT Calculator](https://trainpace.com/vdot) — fitness score and equivalent race times
- [Training Plan Builder](https://trainpace.com/plan) — week-by-week 5K to marathon plans
- [Race Fuel Planner](https://trainpace.com/fuel) — carbs per hour and gel counts
- [Elevation Finder](https://trainpace.com/elevation-finder) — GPX route and climb analysis

## 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.

- [llms.txt](https://trainpace.com/llms.txt) — site index for agents
- [llms-full.txt](https://trainpace.com/llms-full.txt) — every page's Markdown in one file
- [MCP server docs](https://trainpace.com/mcp) — endpoint, tools, and client setup