Road closures are set for Sacramento’s Urban Cow Half Marathon. When and where?
A tradition for Land Park residents can be navigating street closures as road races descend upon the leafy Sacramento neighborhood.
The impending Urban Cow Half Marathon, which will wind through the neighborhood on Sunday morning, wasn’t a concern, though, for several residents surveyed the afternoon before. These included Cid Gunston-Parks, who has lived in Land Park since 2021.
“I’ve lived in various parts of Sacramento all my life and they have so many friggin’ marathons in this city that so many streets are blocked out,” said Gunston-Parks, as she sat outside her front door in Upper Land Park. “You just live with it. You just say, ‘OK, what the heck. I’m gonna find a new route to church today.’”
According to a news release from the city, the race will start at 7:30 a.m. and end by 11:30 a.m., with as many as 3,000 runners slated to compete.
The race will begin and end on an interior road within the park, near Sutterville Road and Freeport Boulevard.
The course will crisscross the neighborhood for its first few miles before heading north to Broadway, where the fifth-mile marker is located. The race goes as far north as Old Sacramento before heading back to Land Park along the Sacramento River.
Sydney Hollis, a San Diego resident who grew up in Sacramento, was out for a walk along Land Park Drive with her mother Laurel Hollis, who lives in Upper Land Park. Sydney Hollis said that she recalled participating in Urban Cow several years ago and that she wished she was taking part this year.
“I thought it was a great course the year I did it,” she said. “I think it’s a good combination of in-town, kind of through the houses, but also along the river and it doesn’t look like it’s cutting really through too much to inconvenience anyone.”
Laurel Hollis wasn’t plussed about the race coming through Land Park.
“It’s festive to have people on your street,” she said. “And I go out and I clap and do all that stuff.”
The race is also welcomed by people like Jeffrey Schaff, vice president of the Land Park Community Association, who lives near Holy Spirit School.
He said he’d been out Saturday morning to watch the 5K race for Urban Cow.
“Tomorrow they shut down some of the streets, so it’ll definitely be a little bit more difficult,” Schaff said. “But … it’s great for the community. We get a lot of the races that come through the park. It’s a big attraction … for the region, really.”
Smooth sailing with I-80 closure
Hours into a planned 55-hour closure of the westbound direction of Interstate 80 through the area of West El Camino Avenue and West Sacramento, Caltrans spokesman Sergio Ochoa-Sanchez said things were proceeding smoothly as of midday Saturday.
“I was just there at the construction area and westbound I-80 is flowing very well,” Ochoa-Sanchez said. “There are no hiccups there.”
A live traffic map on 511.org showed some traffic in the southbound direction of Interstate 5 approaching the interchange with I-80. Eastbound traffic through the impacted stretch appeared to be flowing without interruption.
Ochoa-Sanchez said the closure is planned to continue until 4 a.m. Monday.
