But isn't that just average steepness? What you really need is average steepness, and steepest steepness?? Is steepness even a real word?
But isn't that just average steepness? What you really need is average steepness, and steepest steepness?? Is steepness even a real word?
Cors it is! It's "the property possessed by a line or surface that departs from the horizontal" (do people get paid for writing that stuff?). How about "precipitousness" for that other property of a race route that you're suggesting might help runners decide whether they have the legs for it. So a 24k race to Canary Wharf (height 240m), then up it, might have a steepness of 1% (there are, I am told, no hills in south-east England) but a precipitousness of 100%.