Expo, schedule and race morning

Packet pickup

• Friday, March 5, 2027: 10:00am - 7:00pm
• Saturday, March 6, 2027: 10:00am - 5:00pm

• Attendance is mandatory. The race states plainly: all participants must pick up their own bibs, and bibs are not mailed. There is no race-day pickup for marathon or half participants.
• The ONLY exception published is Start Line Hospitality: buy it and you can collect your bib race morning instead. If your flight lands Saturday evening, that purchase is the entire contingency plan.
• Two days only, and Saturday shuts at 5:00pm. There is no Sunday-morning safety net and no Thursday preview day. A delayed Saturday arrival means no bib.
• The expo is at Dodger Stadium, the START of this point-to-point race, not the finish in Century City. Runners staying near the finish (Fairmont Century Plaza, Waldorf Astoria, The Peninsula) will be crossing the city both to collect the bib and again on race morning. Budget the round trip twice.
• Parking at the expo is free at Dodger Stadium.
• No refunds, deferrals or transfers are offered, so a missed expo is a lost entry.
• The expo doubles as the LA 5K venue on Saturday morning, so the 8:00am 5K and the 10:00am expo open share the same site.

August 2026

The published weekend schedule

This is a point-to-point race and the hard deadlines are all on the front end. The last shuttle from the Century City finish area leaves at 5:30am, and the seeded corrals close at 6:40am for a 7:00am gun, so a runner staying near the finish is up and boarding by roughly 5:00am at the latest. The shuttle is free but the race asks you to reserve it during online registration; the Union Station shuttle explicitly requires a reservation and runs no return service after the race. Gear check closes promptly at 6:30am and is not available to Charity Half participants at all, so half runners have nowhere to put a bag. If you drive instead, Dodger Stadium lots open at 3:00am and the race warns of traffic approaching the stadium as early as 4:00am; nothing may be left overnight and cars still there after 6:00pm are towed, which is a real trap if you plan to shuttle back to a finish-line hotel. Note the split-start format: the half does not go off until 8:15am, well over an hour after the marathon. Times and locations are described by the organizer as subject to change; all of the above comes from the McCourt Foundation's own pages for the March 7, 2027 edition, checked August 2026, so re-verify closer to race week.

Getting there

Plan the whole day around one fact: the race moves you from the finish to the start, and largely does not move you back. Free shuttles run from Avenue of the Stars south of Olympic Blvd continuously from 3:00 to 5:30 a.m. for a 7 a.m. gun, they are free but you should reserve a time slot during online registration, and there is no equivalent afterward except the downtown hotel run. Union Station has its own shuttle from Bay 9 at Patsaouras Transit Plaza at 5:00, 5:30 and 6:00 a.m., and the race states plainly there are NO shuttles back to Union Station after the race. Freeways are not closed but ramps on the 101, 405 and 110 come out of service. If you drive, the car ends up parked at the finish, which is the right place for it.

• Getting to the start on race morning. Pick one of three: the finish-line shuttle from Avenue of the Stars south of Olympic, running continuously 3:00 to 5:30 a.m.; the DTLA hotel shuttle from 500 S. Figueroa between 4 and 6 a.m. with a wristband from your hotel; or the Union Station shuttle from Bay 9 at Patsaouras Transit Plaza at 5:00, 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. Reserve the shuttle during registration. If you are on the 5:30 finish-line bus you are cutting it close, so treat 4:30 to 5:00 as the target boarding window.
• Rail into downtown (Chinatown, Civic Center/Grand Park, Grand Avenue Arts/Bunker Hill). These three stations put you within reach of the downtown shuttle points and the general Dodger Stadium side of the map. General knowledge, not a page I fetched: LA Metro rail typically does not have trains running early enough to reliably deliver you for a 3:00 to 5:30 a.m. shuttle boarding, and Metro's own marathon-day rail guidance was one of the pages I could not open. Do not build your race morning on catching a first train; use the shuttles, which have published times.
• Driving and parking at the finish. The race sells parking near the Century City finish at 10250 Constellation, 1999 Avenue of the Stars, 2030 Century Park West, Westfield Century City, and 2049/2029 Century Park East, all pre-purchasable online. Parking at the finish and shuttling to the start is the clean version of driving: you come back to your own car. Get into the structure before the shuttle window closes, because the closure ring tightens around the course as the morning goes on.
• Street closures and reaching a hotel by car. The ABC7 page I read says closures begin at 7 a.m. and move progressively along the course as the race proceeds; other coverage I only saw in search summaries says some closures start as early as 3 a.m. and last until 6 p.m. Treat both as live until you check the official closure list. No freeways close, but ramps on the 101, 405 and 110 will be unavailable, and Sunset, Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvd are all affected. Practical read: a car can reach a Century City or Beverly Hills hotel before dawn and again well after the course reopens, but between roughly mid-morning and mid-afternoon the finish area is not a place you drive into.
• Towing. Search summaries state that overnight parking at Dodger Stadium is not allowed between race night and the following day, and that vehicles left after 6 p.m. on race day are towed at the owner's expense. I could not open a page confirming this because the official closure notice is a PDF, so verify it before leaving a car at the start. The safe move is simply not to leave a car at Dodger Stadium at all.
• Getting back to your room after finishing. If you stayed in Century City, you walk, and that is the entire argument for staying there. If you stayed downtown, the return shuttle leaves Avenue of the Stars between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and drops at 500 S. Figueroa Street; there is no Union Station return service at all. If you came by rideshare, expect the pickup point to be pushed several blocks out from the finish and expect surge pricing to be at its worst between about 10 a.m. and noon. Anyone meeting you should agree on a spot outside the closure ring before you start, not by text at mile 24.
• The two climbs, for planning your morning. From the course file: miles 3.2 to 4.18 gain 119 feet, and miles 19.42 to 20.89 gain 89 feet. Neither changes your lodging decision, but the second one lands after the point where a shuttle-dependent day has already tired you out, which is one more reason to shorten the post-race logistics.
• Dinner the night before. General knowledge, not from any page I fetched: Craft Los Angeles at 10100 Constellation Blvd in Century City, a short walk from the Fairmont and the shuttle pickup, with straightforward pasta and roasted proteins and an early enough dinner service to get you out by 8. Book it, because Century City empties out but the few restaurants there are fill up.

Parking near the course endpoints

These are mapped garages near the course, not a promise of race-day access. Check closures and pre-booking rules with the organizer.

• The Plaza Garage11 minute modeled walk to finish
• Galaxy Garage12 minute modeled walk to finish
• SM-516 minute modeled walk to finish
• Pico West Parking Garage17 minute modeled walk to finish
• SM-417 minute modeled walk to finish

Published entry tiers

Checked 2026-08-31; fees and tiers can change.