Your Updated San Francisco Marathon Elevation & Pacing Guide
Just like in the past years, the San Francisco Marathon will be an unforgettable experience for both our loyal runners and those running with us for the first time. However, over the years, our old elevation and pacing guide has become obsolete. Don’t fear, here’s a brand new one so you can tackle those hills with confidence!
Written by Andrew Jensen & Pavlína Marek
Calculated & edited by Pavlína Marek
San Francisco is well-known for its hilly geography. In fact, much of San Francisco’s beauty comes from its hills. The city clings to the steeply falling walls of the Presidio, which hold it high above the churning Pacific to the West while, in the East, it falls comfortably into the Bay. You’ll experience it first-hand during the race; from the fast and flat miles of the Embarcadero through the slower climbs of the Marin and the Presidio, you’ll be able to take it all in.
“It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.”
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Elevation Profile
The total elevation gain for the SF Marathon is about 1,303 feet (about 300 feet more than its older versions) with a corresponding loss of 1,303 feet. This is much hillier than the California International Marathon in Sacramento (gain 663 ft, descent 1,003 ft) and Boston (gain 815 ft, loss 1,275 ft), but much less hilly than the Big Sur International Marathon (gain 2,182 ft, loss 2,528 ft).
Pace planning for a hilly course can be difficult. First, you’ll need to find your goal pace for a flat course, then adjust your expectations and plans based on the elevation profile of each mile to come up with a pace plan.
Elevation Breakdown of the SF Marathon
Yes, the SF Marathon is hilly. However, these hills are not uniformly distributed across the course. The first and last two miles are almost perfectly flat. See the mile-by-mile breakdown of the marathon below. (Please note that these elevation changes were measured out using Gaia GPS and Strava and are unofficial. Your measurements may vary slightly.)
We’ve taken each mile of the race (1st column) and listed the feet of climb (2nd column) and the feet of descent (3rd column). Adding them together produces the total gain/loss for that mile (4th column). Because climbing is more difficult than descending, we’ve listed the total climb up to that point in feet (5th column), and as a percentage of the total gain of the race (6th and final column).
(For your convenience, HERE’s a link to a Google Sheets document with the tables and calculations. You can print or duplicate it to your own account to gain editing access and plug in your pace.)
Table A: Elevation Gain/Loss in the SF Marathon, by Mile
Source: Gaia GPS & Strava
A few points on overall race topography:
- While the first half of the marathon has a few bigger climbs, the overall elevation gain is pretty evenly divided, with 54% or climbing in the first half.
- There are three significant climbs at miles 7, 12, and 16.
- There are three significant descents at miles 10, 14, and 21.
Planning your expected SF Marathon Time
Let’s start by assuming you’ve run a flatter marathon or that you have a generic time goal for a flat marathon. For this analysis, we’re going to use a flat-marathon goal time of 3:36 (8 min/mile pace). Then, we’re going to use John Kellogg’s pace plan for elevation. Kellogg is a runner and trainer legendary for the depth and breadth of his posting on www.letsrun.com. A collection of his writing is here.
Although this will differ for every runner based on their natural abilities and state of training, John estimates 10 feet of elevation gain will add 1.74 seconds to a running time regardless of the distance covered. At 1,303 feet of gain times 1.74 seconds added for each 10 feet of gain, we get a total addition to your pace of 227 seconds, or 3 minutes and 47 seconds. Therefore, if I can run a 3:36 marathon with no elevation change, I can expect to finish the SFM in about 3:39:47.
Planning your Pace Around the SF Marathon’s Hills
To determine a pace over each of these mile segments, we’re going to use some rules of thumb developed by Dr. Mervyn Davies, referenced in Tim Noakes’ book “Lore of Running,” and plugged into the previous table for a rough pace estimate. We’re going to use six rules of thumb for calculating the pace you need for each mile:
Miles 1-16
- Every 1% of upgrade slows your pace 3.3%
- Every 1% of downgrade speeds your pace 1.8%
Miles 16-21
- Every 1% of upgrade slows your pace 3.8%
- Every 1% of downgrade speeds your pace by 1.8%
Miles 21-26.2
- Every 1% of upgrade slows your pace 4.3%
- Every 1% of downgrade speeds your pace by 1.7%
Let’s apply these rules on a mile by mile basis using the data from above. In the table below, we’ve taken each mile of the marathon and used the ascent/descent to calculate a total gain/loss grade for that mile. We’ve then taken that grade and multiplied it by the adjusters above. This gives us an adjusted pace for each mile. Of course, these estimates are broad.
Table B: SF Marathon Grade % and Ascent/Descent Pace Adjusters by Mile
Source: Collected data & editor’s calculations
The table above gives us a marathon adjusted pace of 3:39:22. That’s 3 minutes and 22 seconds above our “flat” goal of 3:36:00. This doesn’t exactly correspond with our previous estimated time of 3:39:47 above, mainly because we rounded up and down and looked at the elevation mile per mile rather than actually looking at the grade of the marathon foot by foot (but it is close).
Now, let’s look at a few sample paces with the adjusted mile-by-mile pacing.
Table C: Sample Paces with Adjustment, by Mile
Source: Collected data and editor’s calculations
Your Takeaways
- Yes, the SF Marathon is hilly—but no, the hills won’t have a dramatic effect on your overall performance.
- Not factoring hills into your pacing and coming out the gate too strong, however, can have a tremendous effect on your performance! The most dramatic inclines are in the first half of the race. That’s where many runners are experiencing adrenaline surges and are running too fast. Watch your pace from the get-go! This can lead to severe bonks in the second half of the race.
- When training, be sure to train at a marathon pace a few seconds below what you would train on a flat course. This will compensate for the effect elevation will have on your total performance.
Good luck out there!
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