The home city of the world-famous Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery welcomes the annual spring running of the Sutter Health Modesto Marathon, Half Marathon, 5K & Relay race, along a combination of the city’s residential neighborhoods, urban parks and the campus of Modesto Junior College for an event that will also serve as a fundraiser for the local nonprofit Teens Run Modesto.
Both the half and the full marathons will share the same starting line and time, at 7:00 AM in downtown Modesto near the intersection of 11th and M Streets. From there, runners will follow what is roughly an out-and-back, mostly flat course with a brief loop in the first few miles, which take runners along M Street, Needham Street and Park Avenue for the first stretch that runs through the city’s Enslen Park, whose history dates back more than a century and was designed by John McClaren, the designer for San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
The first and second miles next take runners through the neighborhoods along Sycamore Avenue, Mensinger Avenue and Enslen Avenue before turning onto Griswold and then Princeton Avenue, which marks the start of a long, steady and gradual descent from the starting line elevation of just below 90 feet above sea level to about 65 feet by the time runners reach just past the half-way point of the race.
After hitting the low point just after the middle of the race, runners then have an equally gradual climb back up in elevation over the next several miles in to the race finish.
