California International Marathon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The race starts at 7 a.m. on Folsom-Auburn Road at Represa, above the Folsom Dam wall, at 109 metres. The first kilometre drops twelve metres, and at kilometre 1.5 the first counter-rise of ten metres arrives immediately. Oak Avenue carries the course west through Folsom and Orangevale, and from about kilometre 10 it joins Fair Oaks Boulevard, which then carries the race for 24 kilometres to kilometre 34.4 with few turns and consistently good asphalt.

That stretch is where the course's reputation lives. Between kilometre 1.5 and kilometre 30 there are 26 countable rollers, the largest at kilometre 12 (eleven and a half metres), kilometre 17 (eleven metres) and kilometre 18 (fourteen metres). They are short, mostly 200 to 600 metres long, and unevenly spread: the first half holds 136 of the 186 metres of ascent, the second only 50. The descent is front-loaded too - 71 of the 103 net metres are gone by halfway.

After kilometre 34 the course leaves the boulevard, crosses the Elvas Bridge over the American River at mile 22.3 and runs down J Street under the old elms of East Sacramento into the centre, past Sutter's Fort and over 19th and L Street onto Capitol Mall in front of the State Capitol. The last twelve kilometres carry 19 metres of ascent and are effectively flat. Race day is the first Sunday in December: a cold start around six degrees with high humidity, valley fog more often than not, and rarely more than thirteen degrees later. Nobody drives to the start - every runner rides the organizer's shuttle buses up.

Pacing Strategy

This course gives its descent away early, and that decides the whole plan. By halfway 71 of the 103 net metres are gone - but so are 136 of the 186 metres of ascent. Let the gradient set the pace and add nothing on the rollers: each of the 26 rises between kilometre 1.5 and kilometre 30 is over in half a minute, and pushing over them is paid for forty kilometres later. Fair Oaks Boulevard has no corners to regroup on - the rhythm you settle into there is the rhythm of your race.

The race is decided after kilometre 30. That is where the help stops: 19 metres of ascent and 33 metres of descent over twelve kilometres, and the last seven kilometres dead flat. If you have run to pace rather than to effort until then, the downtown kilometres arrive without the push you have had since Folsom Dam. Budget a second per kilometre for that stretch deliberately and take it back on Capitol Mall, not before.

The real trap is the cold start. Six degrees, high humidity, valley fog and a corral system seeded by goal time make the opening kilometres feel easy, and the long descent flatters that further. The bill arrives through the quadriceps: 288 metres of descent is a lot of eccentric work for a road marathon, and it does not show up as breathlessness but as stride length collapsing over the last ten kilometres.

Training plan for California International Marathon: 12-week build

For most age-group athletes the California International Marathon means between two and three quarter and four and a half hours of work; the cutoff is six hours from the 7:30 sweep start and the finish line closes at 1:30 p.m. The demand is steadily aerobic with no anaerobic spikes - no rise here lasts longer than half a minute. What is unusual for a road marathon is the eccentric load: 288 metres of descent, mostly as a shallow continuous grade rather than as a descent you can coast.

Two phases decide the race, and they ask for opposite things. Kilometre 1.5 to 21 demands pace discipline on undulating ground: 26 short rises with descent between them, and the temptation to run both with the same cadence and stride. From kilometre 30 the course asks the reverse - holding marathon pace on flat road with 30 kilometres of descent already in your legs.

The conditions are the reason this course runs so fast, and they belong in the preparation: first Sunday of December, a 7 a.m. start at 109 metres, a mean of six degrees with high humidity and frequent valley fog, daytime highs around thirteen. No heat acclimatisation is needed, but clothing and warm-up planning are: the start is reachable only by the organizer's shuttle buses, there is no gear check up there, and the wait between bus and gun is longer than at a city marathon. Practise short, cold warm-ups and a race pace you can hit with stiff legs inside the first two kilometres.

In training that means three emphases. First, downhill running as a session in its own right rather than a by-product - long runs on gently falling ground, built up over weeks, so the quadriceps tolerate 288 metres of descent. Second, marathon-pace work on undulating profiles where effort stays constant and pace moves with the gradient, not the other way round. Third, putting the marathon-pace portion at the end of your long runs on the flattest road you have: that is exactly the state you are in from kilometre 30.