A few weeks ago I did a half marathon training run whose elevation profile looked like this:

It kicked my ass so royally I swore I’d never run that way again. Yesterday was my last long training run before a half marathon this weekend, and, unfortunately, unless I want to run on major thoroughfares and/or run laps I have no choice but to head down into “the valley.”

So while I was on the hook to go back toward that devil road, I took a different way out of the valley. It worked so well that the elevation profile for this run looks as such:

See the difference? Yeah, there’s isn’t much. I hate a valley.

(Actually, the difference is an incline of 170 ft/min vs. 283 ft/min, which is pretty significant, but still.)