REVEL Big Bear and Half Marathon

The REVEL Race Series hosts various beautiful and fast downhill marathons and half marathons. The Big Bear course, located in Southern California, occurs in November. The scenery through the San Bernardino National Forest can be enjoyed throughout the majority of the race. The last few miles take runners through a local town, ending near a sports complex field, with the last mile being mostly flat. This course is a Boston Qualifier. REVEL presents very well-organized races. Their communication is spot on - not too much nor too little information. Race swag is fantastic as well. REVEL also allows runners to download their race photos for free. I love that REVEL does not take advantage of runners by continually charging them more money. REVEL is one of my favorite race series and I look forward to participating every year.

INTRODUCTION: I am a racewalker with a median marathon completion time of 5:24:07. The REVEL Big Bear Marathon was my sixty-fifth 26.2-miler accomplished. COURSE: REVEL took some creative license in naming it after an area 21 miles up the road from the starting location: Barton Flats. That said, it was a great day for a marathon: 49 degrees, 20 percent relative humidity, east northeast wind of 2 mph with gusts up to 5 mph. Heading westward, starting at 6630 feet, the first two miles were characterized by a 163 feet per mile elevation drop. This was followed by the most significant uphill of the entire course: a three fourths mile incline beginning at mile 1.9, gaining 129 feet in elevation, being part of the course, between miles 2 and 4, yielding the least elevation drop, 19 feet per mile, of the entire marathon. The next segment, beginning at mile 4, passing through Angelus Oaks through mile 9, dropped on average 100 feet per mile, had some small, short uphill segments that broke up the downward trend. As the road turned south at mile 9, the forest thinned out, the weather warmed up, with only the slopes to the east providing shelter from the sun that was rising. This was the beginning of the steep descent, averaging 249 feet per mile elevation drop toward mile 13. Beginning at mile 13, we enjoyed the steepest part of the course on average at 302 feet per mile all the way out to mile 20. The beginning of this segment was characterized by a hairpin turn just before mile 14, where we merged with the half marathon course, now resuming our westward direction. The winding road began to straighten out in the canyon we were going through. The temperature began to increase as were no longer to have any shade of note for the rest of the way. From mile 20 to the finish, we averaged a descent of 179 feet per mile. Upon entering Mentone somewhere between mile 21 and 22, we benefitted from a brief respite from the sun with the trees lining the highway. It should be noted we stayed on State Highway 38 from the start all the way to mile 25, where we turned right on Opal Avenue, heading north for one-half mile. We then turned left on San Bernardino Avenue for the remaining 0.7 miles to the finish line adjacent to Redlands Sports Park, elevation 1546 feet. Weather at the finish was 86 degrees, 10 percent relative humidity, and calm. ORGANIZATION: The REVEL organization keeps getting better and better. No detail was left unchecked. The staff was diligent in responding to e-mail messages and even was proactive in corresponding with the individual participant when the need arose. Online coach Paul Carmona's course preview was spot on; when heeded, the guidance provided would easily yield a negative split. SPECTATORS: Except for the finish area, spectators were not allowed on the course. There was the lone fan who was staying at a cabin in Angelus Oaks that came out to cheer us on. CONCLUSION: This successor marathon is an improvement over the REVEL Canyon City Marathon it replaced. The inclines are early in this race and the elevation drops are more evenly distributed. If you like screaming downhill races with 5000-foot elevation drops, then this is the race for you. Well done, REVEL.

Very fast course, but need to train for hills for the first 8 miles. There are roughly 8 small hills, short with one stretch of 1/2 mile up. Just take it easy on those hills, don't kill them. You can totally make up the time immediately after the hills or on the second half. Just don't sweat for the slower pace during those 8 small hills. After mile 8 is all downhill. Mile 13 to 16 are a long stretch super fast straight downhill, make sure train for downhill for that long period. This course you can easily get negative split, as long as you don't go out too fast with the steeper hills at the first half. The scenery for the first 20 miles is amazing, even into the town of Redlands you are still running slight downhill with last 2 miles flat. I saw runners ran outside the cones onto the uphills side which can get them disqualified, not fair and not worth it. They have video cameras set and placed throughout the course. This is my second revel big bear and #120 full marathon overall. This has to be the fastest course in the state of California, faster than CIM, which I have run 5 times and BQed every time as well.