New Balance Palm Desert Half Marathon & 5K
New Balance Palm Desert Half Marathon & 5K
( 2 reviews )-
Palm Desert,
California,
United States - February
- 3 miles/5K, 13.1 miles/Half Marathon, Relay
- Road Race
- Event Website
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Carolyn Gardner
Los Angeles, California, United StatesOverall
T-Shirts/SWAG
Aid Stations
Course Scenery
Expo Quality
Elevation Difficulty
Parking/Access
Race Management
The Palm Desert Half Marathon is a smaller event, with a huge following. This event had such a diverse crowd from pro athletes (Summer Sanders was running this year), to high school cross country athlete as well as tons of masters runners. While the overall event was on the smaller size (probably less than 1,000 total participants) there seemed to be a lot of local runners who had ran this event multiple times.
This very family friendly event has 3 distance options, 5K, Half marathon, a relay and a kid-dash. The event starts and finishes at the Civic Center Park with tons of free parking (with a beautiful view of the mountains and palm trees) and plenty of space to hang out after. I definitely see why local runners come back year after year to run the race.
Here is what I liked about the race:
*Free race day parking, easy in and easy out.
*Super easy race day packet pick up
*Great Family party atmosphere post race with a beer garden benefiting Martha's Village
*Tons of aid stations with ample volunteers
*Easy to navigate course, not to many twists and turns
*Nice swag, cotton t-shirt and very cool medal
*If you are properly trained, this course could easily give you a PR.
What could have been better:
*Really boring course, most of which was on the highway
*No crowd support, thankfully I came prepared with the Bib Rave Podcast to listen to
*Post race food, was fruit and cookies..but then again there was beer
Overall, even with a very boring course, I really liked this race. It's a well run event with a fairly moderate course. If you are local to the Palm Desert area, then definitely add this one to your list.