text: 2 percent incline after one mile?   not sure what you're asking here - 2% incline means that the height you go up is 2% of the horizontal distance (not the slope distance) travelled.  so 2% will mean for every 100m horizontal you travel - you will go up 2m.  so are you saying you have travelled 1 mile horizontally - in which case you will move up 0.02 miles (or using pythagoras' theorem you could get the actual slope distance travelled d² = 1² + 0.02², which gives 1.0002 miles)  or are you saying you have travelled 1 mile vertically - in which case you will have moved 50 miles horizontally (since there are 50 2%'s in 100%) (or do you want the actual slope distance travelled, d² = 1² + 50², which gives 50.01 miles)  or are you saying you have travelled 1 mile up a 2% slope.  in which case we need to use pythagoras' theorem backwards to get the horizontal and vertical parts.  the horizontal we can call x and the vertical is 2% of this, ie 0.02x.  so we get:  1² = x² + (0.02x)²  1 = x² + 0.0004x² 1 = 1.0004x² x² = 1/1.0004 - 0.99960 x = 0.9998  so we will have travelled 0.998 miles horizontally and 2% of this (which is 0.019996 miles) vertically.