Runners often hear that the LA Marathon is 'net downhill' and assume that means easy. It doesn't. The course drops in elevation from start to finish, but it does so unevenly, with real climbing woven into the first half and the biggest descents concentrated later — which makes the shape of the elevation profile, not just its net direction, the thing worth understanding before race day.
A high start, a low finish, and a lot in between
The course's highest ground is right around the start at Dodger Stadium, and its lowest point comes near the finish in Century City. That framing is accurate but incomplete on its own: the field doesn't lose elevation in one smooth line. Independent course analyses describe the profile as mostly flat to gently rolling for large stretches, punctuated by a handful of genuinely steep sections that do most of the work in both directions. The race's own course data, shown elsewhere on this page, has the verified totals for gain and loss — this guide focuses on where that climbing and descending actually happens.
Where the climbing is concentrated
After a sharp early drop out of Chavez Ravine and through downtown, the course's steepest sustained climbing shows up as it leaves the civic core and heads into Echo Park and Silver Lake, on rolling streets that alternate between short, punchy uphills and quick descents. This is generally regarded as the toughest continuous climbing on the course. It arrives early enough in the race that fresh legs can absorb it without much damage, provided runners resist the urge to fight the hills by pace rather than by effort.
The course's signature descent
The single steepest descent on the course comes later, as the route turns off Sunset Boulevard onto North San Vicente Boulevard in West Hollywood, well before it reaches Beverly Hills and the Rodeo Drive stretch several miles on. It's a genuine downhill, not a gentle grade, and it's tempting to let it carry you well ahead of goal pace. The tradeoff is quad damage: a hard downhill mid-race can leave runners with less to work with in the closing miles, so treating this descent with the same discipline as an uphill — controlled, not careless — tends to pay off later.
The closing miles: mostly downhill, with one last climb
From roughly the back third of the race, through the Brentwood turnaround and into the return toward Century City, the elevation profile trends favorably: long, gentle declines that reward runners who managed their effort earlier rather than spent it. That said, the course doesn't hand you a flat finish. There's a short climb built into the final mile as the route returns to Century City, which is exactly the wrong place to discover you have nothing left. Runners who paced the earlier descents conservatively tend to handle this last rise far better than those who didn't.
Why a net-downhill course still demands real training
It's tempting to read 'net downhill' as a shortcut to a faster time, and over a full field, it probably does shave some time off the average finish. But the course description most independent analyses settle on is 'mostly flat to gently rolling, with a handful of genuinely significant climbs and descents' — not simply 'downhill.' Total descent does outpace total climbing by a real margin, which is why the course nets downhill overall, but that net figure hides the fact that a runner still has to climb real hills early and absorb real downhill impact later. Training for this course should look less like flat tempo running and more like a mix of hill repeats and controlled downhill running, so your legs are prepared for both halves of the equation rather than just the favorable net number.
How this compares to a genuinely flat major
Runners coming from a pancake-flat course elsewhere should recalibrate their expectations rather than assume LA will run the same way. A truly flat marathon asks for pacing discipline because there's no terrain to force a slower mile on you; the LA Marathon asks for pacing discipline for the opposite reason — the terrain will force pace changes whether you plan for them or not, and the runners who fare best are the ones who let it, rather than fighting to hold a single number through both the climbs and the descents.
If you're building a training plan around this profile, hill-repeat sessions that mix short, sharp climbs with controlled downhill running will serve you better than flat tempo work alone. This page's course-facts card has the verified gain, loss, and profile figures worth reviewing alongside this section-by-section breakdown.