Challenging hills, paired with stunning views of both the Stinson Beach coastline and the immense, dramatic trees and landscapes of Muir Woods National Monument, await runners at the Muir Woods Marathon, Half Marathon, and 7-mile run.
Run by Enviro-Sports, a Stinson Beach, Calif.-based race management company that stages events just like this one all around the San Francisco Bay Area and around Northern California, the Muir Woods race is a smaller one, drawing just a few hundred runners each year.
At the race, runners will follow an out-and-back course that starts and finishes at the Stinson Beach parking lot just off Marine Way and Highway 1. From there, they’ll make their way along roads for the first stretch, and then head onto the trails that lead into Muir Woods National Monument, along the Dipsea Trail and the Ravine Canyon Trail, as they make their way into the place where scenes from 1983’s Return of the Jedi were filmed.
Organizers say that “from the word ‘Go,’ you’ll be heading up” — and they’re right. The course rises more than 1,100 feet in the first three miles, as runners climb through the old-growth redwood forests of Muir Woods, march up both rock and wooden staircases, and even climb a wooden ladder from one trail to the next.
Waterfalls, creeks, and streams abound inside the park along the trails, and runners will have plenty of scenery to take their minds off the difficulty of the race as they head up and down the trails.
And down the trails go between miles 3 and 5, giving back those 1,100 feet of elevation by the time runners reach the mid-way point of the race. That stretch turns into a much longer and more gradual uphill in the second half, as runners are heading along the Ben Johnson, Camp Eastwood and finally the Dipsea Trail on the way back into the starting line for the race finish.
The scheduled starting time for the race is 8:00 AM, and runners will have 6.5 hours to complete the race. Orange ribbons will be placed on the trails to keep runners on the race course, and no audio devices will be allowed on race day.
