Four and a half thousand runners will begin the 39th Big Sur International Marathon at 06:45 on Sunday morning when race director Josh Priester sends the field out of the Big Sur Station parking lot and on to 26.2 miles of closed Highway 1. The race is entirely sold out across every distance — the marathon itself, the marathon relay, the 21-miler, the 11-miler, the 12K and the 5K — and organisers confirmed on Monday that every bib is spoken for, repeating a pattern that has seen demand for the California scenic classic outrun available entries every year since the pandemic restart. Charity partner places and the Race Benefactor programme remain the only late-entry routes.
The course is unusual among American marathons for being almost entirely point-to-point and exposed. From the redwood canyon of the Big Sur Station the field climbs to Hurricane Point at mile 12, a twisting two-mile ascent that typically takes runners into a headwind off the Pacific, before dropping past the iconic Bixby Bridge at the midpoint. The second half rolls through Garrapata State Park to the finish in Carmel-by-the-Sea, with very little shelter and the field-famous six-hour cut-off that closes the course at 13:00 to return Highway 1 to two-way traffic. The US Transportation Research Board classifies Highway 1 here as a Nationally Designated Scenic Byway, the first such designation in the country, and Big Sur remains the only USATF-certified marathon to run on it in its entirety.
The weather forecast is the usual Big Sur contradiction. Monterey County's National Weather Service office is currently projecting low cloud from dawn through about 10:00, lifting to mostly sunny conditions at the finish, with a coastal low of 8C at the start rising to 15C in Carmel by 12:30. Winds are the variable that matters most here: the long-range guidance has a westerly 8 to 14mph from Hurricane Point onward, which historically has made or broken sub-three attempts. The 2022 edition was cancelled outright for high winds and mudslides on Highway 1, and the 2023 race was shortened to an out-and-back to safeguard the course, giving the 39th edition an unbroken four-year stretch as the full point-to-point for the first time this decade.
The elite invitational field is small but purposeful. Two-time Big Sur champion Adriana Piccinini of Italy returns for a third attempt at the women's course record of 2:41:58 set by Joan Ottaway in 2004, while American Tyler McCandless, a multiple US marathon top-ten finisher, is the name to watch in a men's field that has been deliberately kept domestic this year. The Big Sur Marathon Foundation has in recent years foregone deep international recruitment in favour of promoting the race as a bucket-list experience rather than a time-trial, and course records — the men's 2:16:39 set by Brad Hudson in 1987 — are unlikely to fall on a course that rewards patient pacing more than chasing splits.
Big Sur also shares 26 April with the single busiest marathon day of the European and American calendar. The TCS London Marathon's elite wheelchair fields leave Blackheath at 08:50 local, the men's elite and mass starts at 09:35, and the Haspa Marathon Hamburg begins its 40th edition at 08:30 local. The Zurich Rock 'n' Roll Madrid Marathon starts at 09:00 Central European time, and the Ljubljana spring marathon at 09:30. For California runners that sequence means a morning in which live Majors coverage from London has wrapped before the Big Sur field is much past Bixby Bridge. The Big Sur Marathon Foundation will again livestream the Carmel finish line from 09:30 Pacific, with radio commentary on KAZU 90.3FM for runners and spectators on the course.