Date: October 12th, 2025
Time: 4:20:30 (9:56 pace)
Weight: 194 lbs

Here is a report from my participation in the 2025 Humboldt Redwoods Marathon. This was a really enjoyable experience despite the training essentially failing to materialize due to a lack of time. So I just took the run easy the whole way. Of course that didn't delivery any near-PR performance, but at the same time, I had a wonderful time taking photos and chatting with other runners. At no point did I feel like I was going to run out of energy or bonk. This has got to be one of the easiest marathon courses ever, even easier than the almost identical Avenue of the Giants. I will definitely be back!

This was now my fourth time visiting the Humboldt County and the second time running a marathon on the Avenue of the Giants. The first time passing through this land of giant redwoods was in 2014 on a drive from Seattle to Napa for the Ragnar Relay. I then returned in 2016 to run the Avenue of the Giants Marathon in 3h35m. I came back in 2022 for a week-long de-stressing "sabbatical" in Ferndale. Being originally from Europe while now living in Southern California, I really miss rain and proper trees. Humboldt County delivers both and reminds me a bit of home, I guess.

Sandra and I took a direct United flight from LAX to Eureka/Arcata. Both of us got upgraded but ended up with different seats. Sandra was in a single while I was in a double (this was a small plane with a 1-2 configuration). Once my companion, an older large black guy arrived, I asked him if he wanted to switch with Sandra. Later, I found out from the flight attendants that my "companion to be" was the rapper Xzibit on his way to a concert at some NorCal casino. Then after landing and chatting with another passengers also coming for the marathon, we grabbed the rental car from Enterprise and drove down to Eureka to check in at the historical Eureka Inn. This hotel is truly spectacular, and judging from the multitude of portraits of famous people who had stayed there (including world-famous politicians and entertainers), the hotel used to be the social hub of this town. One complaint I have is that, at least our room, had an extremely poor sound insulation, and this is coming from somebody who gets to stay in a lot of cheap motels due to my commuting schedule. This was particularly bad the night prior to the marathon, as I could not fall asleep until after 1 am due to our neighbor's conversation and TV. They just might have been in our room with how thin the wall was. After checking in, we drove to Ferndale and went for a short walk along the Lost Coast beach. We also stopped for dinner at Ferndale Pizza Company (where we had the tasty Hot Cowgirl pie), and tried ciders at the Sitka wine lounge.

Race Day

Both Humboldt Redwoods and the Avenue of the Giants marathons are organized by the same group, the Six Rivers Running Club, and are run on the same course, just in a flipped order. The marathon course is in the shape of an L, with the start and finish at the corner point. Each leg of the L is a quarter-marathon long, so each out-and-back is a half marathon. One of the legs is on the famous Avenue of the Giants, which is a single-lane sightseeing road through the massive California coastal redwoods, while the other leg is on Bull Creek Flats Road (also called Mattole Road on Google Maps). "Avenue" puts runners on the Bull Creek section first. At least when I ran it, the marathon started prior to the half and the 10k, which are run on the main Avenue. This meant that many marathon runners end up finishing with the tail end of the half-marathoners and the 10kers, who tend to be both on the slower side and also less aware of running etiquette. It can get annoying having to zig-zag around walkes taking up the entire width of the path just as you are eager to finish. Humboldt, on the other hand, has you starting on the Avenue with everyone else. Here you get the moral boost of being in a large pack at the start. In "Avenue" you start more solo at the beginning. Humboldt on the other hand turns into a ghost town for the second half. This could be an issue for those who need spectators to help them finish, but I honestly did not mind, and actually prefer the solitude offered by the big trees. The Bull Creek Flats road is also uphill (unlike the Avenue which is flat), so you actually get to run downhill for the last 6.5 miles which was really nice.

One huge perk of this race is that due to its small size (with only around 1000 runners across the 3 events), the race-day logistics are simple and you can just arrive an hour prior to the race still having enough time to pick up your bib and make it to the restroom. The only possible issue is that traffic gets pretty backed up due to the parking lot being a dirt field with a single narrow bumpy road leading into it. The race swag was excellent and among the best I have seen at a marathon. Not only did we get a nice shirt, but we also got a bright yellow hat, which is very handy for winter runs, and also an insulated cooler, which I have since been using weekly for my lunch commuting to San Luis Obispo. After that, it was time to visit the porta potty (I timed this poorly so I missed the start by about two minutes), and then I was off. I saw Sandra at the half way point. The second half became much more deserted for the second half, but the beautiful tall trees offered plenty of distraction. One thing that I found interesting during the run was the huge number of young people who also happened to be first-time marathoners. Some of them might have been students from Cal Poly Humboldt, but not all.

Below you will find my Garmin data. As you can see, the pace was very consistent and my heart rate started climbing only towards the end. This also corresponds to the final downhill section, where I actually tried to pick up the pace. I should also point out that I was "happily surprised" that the watch actually recorded the whole event. I recently replaced my legacy Garmin Forerunner with a Garmin Vivo Active. While the new watch is generally fine, it has a really bad habit of either autosaving or even auto-discarding during a run due the inability to turn off its touchscreen. So you get a drop of sweat on the watch, or your shirt sleeve touches it, and the activity lost. It's really dumb!

Cal Poly Humboldt

The next day we woke up to a heavy rain brought in by an unseasonably early storm. The system moved down to Southern California by the next day and covered our hometown with almost two inches of precipitation. We got very lucky in the storm not arriving a day earlier to soak the race. Writing this report a month later, we have had a train of storms pass by since, making this year quite different from the last, when the first rain did not arrive until January. The storm moved out just as it was time to check out. On the way to airport, we stopped by Cal Poly Humboldt. This September I started teaching at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo so it was nice seeing this sister campus. CP Humboldt focuses mostly on environmantal and forestry majors, although they offer engineering as well. The campus is beautiful, with a a redwoods grove right next to the academic buildings. We found a massive redwood stump next to a baby tree, so we got to recreate the picture from the 2016 trip.

Training

My training was awful. I tend to follow the George Buckheit training plan leading to a sequence of three 21 mile progression runs intermixed with three 17-mile 4-3-2-1 pickups, but this year I didn't do a single pick ups run, and got in just a single long run which actually ended up being 24 miles due a miscalculation. That run was around the Slnava reservoir in the Slovak town of Piestany, where I spent a month during the late summer. I also got in two 8 mile runs in Bulgaria while visiting my mom who lives there for retirement. Besides that, I got in a 15 mile run in Sycamore Canyon here in SoCal, during which I saw two mountain lions cross the path, with one coming back to look at me that I had to ts-ts-ts shoo away. But that was it, not counting various weekly 4-8 mile jogs.

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