Wisdom Wednesday - February 28th, 2024

[Kimberly22]

Welcome back to Wisdom Wednesday! Every other Wednesday we'll drop a question in the Community Hub. You then have 9 days (that's until the following Friday) to showcase your Strava knowledge and answer the question.

Question: How is pace calculated?

Remember to submit your answer in the comments by March 8th. The winner will be randomly selected from the correct answers to win a free one-month Strava subscription! 🙌 

The lucky winner will be announced on March 13th.

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[Kimberly22]

Thank you to those who participated and congratulations to @Jana_S the winner of this round of Wisdom Wednesday!

To learn more about pace calculation, check out these support articles:

Moving Time, Speed, and Pace Calculations

[Jana_S]

Thank you @Kimberly22 ♥️

[Harry_Roberts]

So, I would I would assume that the pace is calculated using GPS data for the distance travelled. Given that these are from satellites this information would have to be transmitted using microwaves. Then the time that this distance was covered in can be used to calculate the pace. As the pace is in minutes/kilometre the given ratio of time/distance over the time window that is being measured can be multiplied out to get time/1 with 1 being the kilometre. As for the the time window that the pace is calculated over, if it is merely the average pace for the whole activity then it would be using totals. However if we are looking at instantaneous pace I would assume that this measuring window would be a few seconds or so to prevent random drift from spiking the pace to an inconceivable level. 

[Jana_S]

Nobody’s commented just yet? I’ll take my chances then 😎

How is pace calculated? Similarly as speed - but “reversed”. 

Speed used by regular mortals would usually be in km/h (or mph), distance divided by time. That’s quite useful e.g. when describing how fast you’re driving a car, but not so much when trying to say how fast you’re running. 

Pace unit would be minutes per km (or mile), i.e. calculated as time divided by distance. It’s much more suitable for runners as it allows more subtle nuances. For example: speed 10 km/h would translate as a 6:00/km pace, 12 km/h as 5:00/km. But runners would usually need a quite specific pace without a gazillion of decimal digits. Want to run a half marathon under 2 hours? Easy, you need to run at 5:40/km. But speed for the same would be something like… 10.59 km/h. Not so runner-friendly. Pace is way nicer! 😏