Expo, schedule and race morning

Packet pickup

• Friday (packet-pickup page reading: April 23): 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
• Saturday (packet-pickup page reading: April 24): 9:30 AM - 6:00 PM
• Friday (expo page reading: April 25): 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
• Saturday (expo page reading: April 26): 9:30 AM - 6:00 PM
• Friday (race-weekend-schedule page reading: April 27): 12:00 PM (noon) - 6:00 PM
• Saturday (race-weekend-schedule page reading: April 28): 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

• The three official pages contradict each other on both the dates and the Saturday opening time (9:00 vs 9:30 AM). The packet-pickup page carries the most recent-looking cycle (Fri Apr 23 / Sat Apr 24); the expo page and the weekend-schedule page appear to be older cycles left up. Confirm the year's dates before booking flights around Friday arrival.
• No proxy pickup, stated flatly on the packet-pickup page: "Each runner must pickup their own bib, friends and family are NOT permitted to pickup a bib on behalf of another participant. No exceptions." A spouse or teammate cannot collect your bib.
• Photo ID plus a check-in pass are both required: "You must bring your photo ID & your check-in pass to pick up your bib." The check-in pass is a QR code plus bib number emailed several times before the event, so keep the email retrievable offline.
• No mailing option for bibs is mentioned anywhere on the packet-pickup page.
• The expo is in Monterey, which is the FINISH end of this point-to-point course, not the start. That is convenient: runners lodge in Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea and bus south to the start on race morning.
• Your bus ticket to the start is issued AT THE EXPO with your bib (per the transportation page). Missing the expo therefore means missing the only sanctioned way to reach the start line, not just the bib.
• The expo closes 6:00 PM Saturday and the marathon is Sunday morning with buses loading in the 3:00-4:00 AM range, so there is no practical late-arrival window. A Saturday-evening arrival flight into Monterey or San Jose is a race-ending risk.
• Free race clinics run Saturday from 11:00 AM in the Steinbeck Ballroom, third floor of the conference center (per the expo page); the weekend-schedule page lists clinics starting Friday at 2:00 PM.

August 2026

The published weekend schedule

Point-to-point, and the start is unreachable on your own: the official transportation page states Highway 1 is closed to private vehicles early race morning with no parking and no runner drop-off at any start area, and the race-day page states all marathoners, 21-Milers, relay and 11-Miler runners must take a bus to the start. You lodge at the FINISH end (Monterey / Carmel-by-the-Sea) and ride roughly an hour south in the dark. Your pickup location is pre-selected in your haku account weeks out, and the bus ticket itself is handed to you at the expo with your bib, so the chain is expo -> ticket -> bus -> start with no way to skip a link. Relay runners get one option only, Monterey Peninsula College. The 3:30-4:00 AM loading window above comes from Big Sur's own site as surfaced in search-result snippets of pages I did not open directly (the site's bus PDFs show 3:45-4:00 AM in one year and 4:00-4:15 AM in another), so treat the exact clock time as year-specific and verify it on your bus ticket. Everything else here is from pages I fetched: bigsurmarathon.org/expo/, /packet-pick-up/, /race-weekend-schedule/, /race-day/ and /bus-pick-up-locations/. Several of those pages are left over from different race years and disagree on dates and Saturday expo opening time; both readings are recorded above. Only the 5K and 12K have race-morning packet pickup (6:30-7:30 AM at the finish village); nothing on the marathon pages offers race-morning bib pickup for the marathon, and with buses leaving before 4:00 AM it would be impossible anyway.

Getting there

There is no public transit here in any useful sense; this is rural Highway 1 and the race bus fleet is the transit system. The single fact that governs your morning is that Highway 1 is closed to private vehicles early on race morning, with no parking and no runner drop-off at any start area, so there is literally no way to drive yourself to the start. You pick a pickup location through your haku account in March, drive or walk to that pickup point in the small hours, and board. Everything else, including how you get back, hangs off that choice.

• Race buses to the start are mandatory and very early. Free race-provided transportation is required for marathon, relay, 21-miler and 11-miler participants unless you are staying in Big Sur. The race's own pages give two readings of the timing and I am recording both: one states bus loading begins at 3:30 a.m. with departures staggered between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m., while the published bus-location maps are titled with load windows of 3:45 to 4:00 a.m. (2025 map) and 4:00 to 4:15 a.m. (2020 map). The reason for the brutal hour is stated plainly: it takes an hour for a bus to reach Big Sur along a narrow winding road in the dark and an hour to return, so the final buses must leave for the start by 4:30 a.m. Miss that and there is no second option.
• Highway 1 closure: 4 a.m. to about 1 p.m. Travel restrictions run from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. Southbound, only vehicles with passes are permitted south of Otter Cove after 4 a.m. Northbound, you must clear the Big Sur Post Office by 5:45 a.m. and pass the Carmel River Bridge by 7 a.m. A public northbound caravan leaves Point Sur at 10 a.m. travelling at 25 mph. Because Highway 1 is closed to vehicular traffic until after 1 p.m., spectators, family and friends can only watch from the finish area, so do not plan for anyone to see you at Hurricane Point.
• Rio Road and the Carmel control point. Travellers heading to the Highlands may cross Rio Road until 7 a.m.; after that, southbound visitors are held near The Crossroads Carmel until they can join a caravan. Residents entering Highway 1 from driveways or access roads on the east side may join a caravan at the back. Practically, if your hotel is on the Rio Road / Carmel Rancho side you can reach it, but assume your car is parked for the day once the morning restrictions bite. I could not source anything about towing or tow-away start times, so treat kerbside parking near the finish as unverified rather than safe.
• Getting back after you finish. Return shuttles operate between 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. from the finish area. If you based yourself in Monterey, that shuttle is your ride and you should expect to wait; the fetched pages did not spell out which pickup points the return buses serve, so confirm yours on the 2027 map. If you booked Carmel River Inn or Carmel Mission Inn you skip the whole problem and walk 2 to 5 minutes to a shower. If you are staying in Big Sur you are waiting on the highway reopening rather than on a bus, and the race's own advice discourages northbound travel south of Bixby Bridge before 10 a.m. Meet your people at the Runner Reunion area near the food tent, which is the designated family meeting zone in the finish village.
• 5:45 a.m. reality check by base. In Monterey at 5:45 a.m. you have already been on a bus for well over an hour; the hotels are big enough that lobbies are awake and staffed, and the boarding points (340 Tyler Street garages, Monterey Peninsula College at 980 Fremont) are lit, signed parking lots. In Carmel at 5:45 a.m. the village is silent and pitch dark, and the Ocean Avenue and Junipero pickup at Carmel Plaza is a street corner with nothing open, so bring your own coffee and a throwaway layer. In Big Sur at 5:45 a.m. you are catching the last of the two continuous shuttle loops on Highway 1, which stop running at exactly 5:45, so there is zero margin.
• Night-before dinner. Il Fornaio in Carmel-by-the-Sea, in the Pine Inn on Ocean Avenue: straightforward Italian, big pasta portions, early enough service that you can eat and be in bed by nine before a 3 a.m. alarm. Stated plainly: this recommendation is from my own general knowledge, not from any page I fetched for this dossier, so check current hours and book ahead.

Published entry tiers

Checked 2026-08-27; fees and tiers can change.