Introducing the Race Time Estimator: Your Finish Time, Paced for the Mountain

A week out from a goal race, most of us do the same thing: open a spreadsheet, paste in the mile splits, and start guessing. Add ten seconds for the climb at mile 12. Take some back on the descent. Fudge the rest. An hour later you've got a pace chart you don't fully trust — because a spreadsheet doesn't know the mountain.

The new Race Time Estimator does. It's live on the Course tab of every race in HARDN, and it turns one number — your goal pace on flat ground — into a full, elevation-aware, mile-by-mile race plan.

One pace in, a full plan out

Load your course GPX and enter a single flat-ground goal pace. That's the only input. From there, HARDN reads the real elevation profile of your race and adjusts every mile for the grade — slower on the climbs, faster on the runnable descents — using a grade-adjusted pace model (the same physiology behind the "GAP" number on your watch).

The result is a per-mile table: elevation gain and loss, average grade, a suggested time for that mile, and a running total. No manual math. No guessing how much that 1,800-foot climb at mile 40 is going to cost you.

Edit any mile

The suggested times are a starting point, not a straitjacket. Know you'll power-hike the steep pitch at mile 22? Type your own split for that mile and everything downstream recalculates instantly — your projected finish, your average pace, and your clock time at every aid station.

Set a start time and the estimator shows you the time of day you'll reach each point on course — including a tidy "+1d" tag for the multi-day 100-milers. It's the difference between telling your crew "I'll be at mile 62 sometime in the afternoon" and "I'll be at mile 62 around 4:10 PM."

Build more than one plan

Race day rarely goes exactly to script, so the estimator lets you save as many plans as you want. Build an A-goal. Build a realistic day. Build a survival pace for when it all goes sideways. Name them, flip between them, and each one saves to your race automatically — across every device you log in on.

Why it beats the spreadsheet

- It knows your course. Every mile is grade-adjusted from your actual GPX, not a flat average.
- It's one input. A goal pace in, a complete plan out — in seconds.
- It's live. Override a mile and your finish time updates as you type.
- It travels. Your plans are saved to your race, not trapped in a file on one laptop.

Where to find it

The Race Time Estimator lives on the Course tab of your race, right under the elevation profile. It's part of HARDN Pro.

A spreadsheet guesses at the climbs. The Race Time Estimator runs them with you.

Break free.