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Tammy Sargeant
2018 REVEL Big Bear Marathon
Published: Oct. 15, 2018, 9:26 a.m. 
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Overall Rating
5/5 Stars
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Describe your race day.
All in all a good day. Favorite memories were meeting up with my 3 running buddies at the end of the race; it’s small enough that we could find each other easily at the end and enjoy post race activities together.
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Did you PR?
No, but wouldn’t expect to...too much time since my PR (53 minutes faster in1986)
Yes, I BQd
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How would you describe the course?
Course was beautiful! Definitely a nicely laid out, downhill course as the elevation drop was spread over the entire course as opposed to being concentrated in the beginning. Elevation not an issue at all. The course breakdown and description in the race literature was well done giving participants good insight as to how to approach the race
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Tell us about your training.
I ran 45-55 miles a week with hill workouts every 1-2 weeks. I did downhill repeats in my hill workouts but the longest segment I had was one mile. I wish I had done a few runs with much longer downhill segments, maybe 5-10 mile downhills. I did not perfect my downhill form very well, consequently my quads were tightening up by mile 11, not good, which meant I struggled more than I would have liked to early in the race and I did not negative split which should have been a no brainer on that course. My advice would be to throw in long downhill training runs
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What advice would you give future runners?
Read the Revel provided description of the course and the race strategy. Very helpful on what to expect and how to run the course. Secondly, and this may be obvious to everyone else but me, but remember to turn on your Garmin way before race start time. I didn’t think about how long it would take to connect and didn’t turn my watch “on” until seconds before race start; consequently my watch took awhile to connect so was way off on the mileage during the race.
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What fun things did you do in the area before or after the race?
Traveled from Long Beach, came in the afternoon before. Did not do anything fun before or after the race other than the expo and out to dinner Saturday.
Couple of things that could have been better for us that would have made our morning a little less stressful:
1) Although we were told which corner full marathon versus half marathon busses would be loading in the morning, it was too hard to find in an unfamiliar area in the dark. Having officials or signs out in the morning near parking areas directing runners to the correct bus location would have been helpful. We weren’t the only ones confused, half and full runners alike and many of us ended up running a bit because we were concerned about missing our bus despite having arrived and parked by 4:30am.
2) Our bus driver was one of the ones who took a wrong turn in the morning so consequently we took over 1 1/2 hours to get to the course. We arrived with only a few minutes to race time. Worked out okay but a bit stressful. Better directions to the bus drivers and maybe officials at the intersection where the half buses split from the full buses so the bus drivers didn’t accidentally follow the wrong buses.