Climbing Efficiency: a score for how well you actually climb
Automatic climb detection, VAM-based scoring.
Climbing Efficiency is an ENDURE metric that scores how effectively you convert watts into vertical metres. The app finds the climbs in your outdoor rides on its own and builds the score from your vertical ascent rate (VAM), so climbing gets its own number instead of hiding inside your average power.
What is VAM and why score against it?
VAM is your rate of vertical ascent, in metres per hour. It is the honest output measure on a climb: watts describe what you put in, VAM describes what actually happened to your altitude. Scoring the relationship between the two says something neither number says alone — whether the power you produced turned into height efficiently, or went into fighting the bike, the line and the gradient.
How does automatic climb detection work?
You do not mark segments or set up anything. ENDURE reads the elevation profile of an outdoor ride, identifies the climbs inside it, and scores them. Over a season that turns every hilly ride into data rather than only the ones you remembered to flag.
What does the score actually tell you?
It gives climbing its own trend line. A rider whose FTP has been flat for two months may still be climbing better — steadier pacing, better position, less time out of the saddle at the wrong moment — and this is the metric that shows it. It is also a fairer comparison across climbs of different lengths and gradients than raw time is.
Does this work for indoor rides too?
Climbing Efficiency is built for outdoor rides, because it needs real elevation change. Your indoor sessions still feed FTP and VO2max trends, lactate thresholds and heat data — this particular metric is what your outdoor riding contributes to the picture.
Do I have to mark climbs myself?
No. ENDURE detects the climbs in your outdoor rides automatically and scores them without any setup.
Is Climbing Efficiency the same as VAM?
No. VAM is the raw ascent rate in metres per hour; Climbing Efficiency is a score built on it that reflects how effectively your watts became vertical metres.
Where do the rides come from?
Outdoor rides reach ENDURE through Strava or intervals.icu sync, including your existing history when you first connect.
Score your climbs
Free on iOS and Android — connect Strava or intervals.icu and let ENDURE find the climbs in the riding you already did.
