Elevation

What is Elevation?

Elevation is the change in vertical height (change in altitude) over the course of your run, measured in metres or feet. NURVV Run provides Elevation Profile graphs within the Run Summary sections to support your interpretation of how other metrics vary over the run.

The elevation at the start of the run is taken as the zero value. The Elevation Profile then shows your elevation at each point of the run relative to your starting point, positive elevation means you are above your starting altitude; negative elevation means you are below your starting altitude. The slope of the Elevation Profile shows whether you were on level, inclined, or declined terrain at different parts of your run.

Elevation metrics are available for Outdoor Run and Pace Coach workouts, but not available for Indoor Runs

Monitoring Elevation

Elevation Profiles are provided in a number of areas of the Run Summary screen to help you gauge how the gradient you ran on may have affected your performance and technique metrics.

If you complete an Outdoor Run or Pace Coach workout and tap into that run from the History app screen then you can begin to get information on the elevation changes of that run.

The main Run Summary screen provides the value for the total height climbed during the course of the run. This value is not the difference between the starting altitude and the finishing altitude; it is the sum of the positive vertical height gained throughout the run.

Tapping on the Elevation (Height climbed) value takes you to the Splits tab for the run. The net elevation change for each split (each km or mile) is shown in the last column of the Splits Table, along with the Pace and Pace Change values. So, here you can check how the elevation profile of each split may have influenced the pace you were able to maintain for that split.

The Pace Profile at the top of the Splits tab also contains the first view of the Elevation Profile which is superimposed onto the lower part of the Pace Profile and is shaded as a grey region. A scale for Elevation is given on the right hand side of the graph with the maximum positive and negative elevations (as a difference from the starting elevation of zero) provided for context. The dashed horizontal line represents an elevation of zero (the same altitude as the start of the run).

Any elevation data point above the dashed line is an altitude above your starting point. Any elevation data point below the dashed line is an altitude below your starting point. The slope of the grey region indicates the inclination of the terrain that you were running on for each segment of the run, showing whether you were running on a level surface, going uphill, or going downhill.

The Elevation Profile is time-aligned to your Pace Profile and the optional Cadence and Step Length Profiles so that you can see where and how the elevation changes were influencing your running performance metrics.

The Elevation Profile is also shown as letterbox graphs in conjunction with the other Metric Profile graphs for Cadence, Step Length, Pronation, and Footstrike, access these by tapping into the summary values for each of the metrics on the Run Summary screens. This gives you a very neat way of visualizing how the surface inclination affects each of your technique metrics. For example, during uphill sections perhaps your Cadence Profile stays pretty constant but perhaps your Step Length drops. During uphill sections, you might find your Footstrike is further forward and on steeper downhill sections you might find your Footstrike moving backwards to a Rearfoot strike.