Priyanka Altman's Staging Area

This was my first marathon, and I overall had a great experience. Sacramento really showed up in terms of crowd support and that made a big difference to my morale and ability to perform. The race starts in more rural and suburban neighborhoods; given this I had expected less spectators until the downtown area in the last 10k, but I was thrilled to pass so many families with dogs, fun signs, speakers blasting feel good tunes, and offerings of water bottles and candy. The people offering tissues were also a lifesaver, and throughout the course there were several live music ensembles.

It is not the most scenic route, but I loved the number of trees and the weather was ideal (starting in mid-upper 40s, ending in mid-50s), with fog in the morning, and cloudy skies throughout. There are gently rolling hills for much of the race, the last one being up and over a bridge in mile 21. I made a deliberate effort to incorporate hills into my training, and in the race I found that the uphills were generally not at all steep, and the speed and recovery I regained on the long downhill portions more than made up for the ups. Then I was able to push my speed most in the final 10K, which was generally flat (aside from that bridge).

My main complaint and reason for docking a star has to do with some organizational logistics. I stayed at a race partner hotel (DoubleTree Hilton in Point West) and signed up online in October to take a bus from that location “B”. Buses were scheduled to leave the hotel at 5am on race day. I arrived at the lobby at 4:50am to find the two buses out front were already full, with easily another 100 runners still in the lobby. The bus drivers and volunteers were uncertain if more buses would be coming. Around 5:20am another bus came, and I made it on that one, but I’m not sure how long the final group of runners at the hotel had to wait. No one was checking to see who had actually signed up to take these buses. I read past CIM reviews mentioning issues with buses, so it’s disappointing to see this seems to be a recurring issue each year. I will say the return bus ride to the hotel after the race went smoothly.

After I finished the race, I was disappointed to find they had run out of bananas and other pre-packaged snacks. I am not a particularly fast runner and this was my first marathon (goal time was <5:00, I actually outperformed my expectations by a lot with a 4:39:04 finish) but I still think a race with a 6 hour time limit should not be running out of these things with over an hour left still. There were hot burritos available past the immediate finish line area, but my stomach was not ready for something so heavy.

Other than those two grievances though, this was a fantastic race! The crowd support was wonderful, I love the shirt and medal, and I would run CIM again.