Full Article and Pace notes available here...
The 2018/2019 course has some new twists and turns that I have not seen in the past. The climb to the start of the Golden Gate Bridge is new and so is the turn around an the other end. I am a bit of a data nerd for this marathon as I have years of personal tracker info that I use to create my annual pace notes.
How I pace the San Francisco Marathon
If the course was perfectly flat I would still not run an even pace. I like a slow start and fast finish - Negative split. The slow start helps keep your heart rate down and the fast finish gives a great phycological boost as you pass other runners in the last third of the race.
On a flat course my first two miles would be 105% and 102% of the average and the last ten miles would be 98% - 99% of the average. Layered on top of that we have the ups and downs of the San Francisco course. If a hill slowed me be 12 seconds going up the same gradient would only give back 8 seconds on the way down. I have calculated this on a mile by mile basis from the GPS data I collected during the Full Course Video. One more thing to keep in mind is the accuracy of your watch data. It is normal to see a distance of 26.5 miles on your watch at the finish line. That is an extra 0.3 miles to account for in the Pace notes.
Full Article and Pace notes available here...