You’ll get the chance to run among the orange, lemon and grapefruit groves of California’s Inland Empire at the 12th annual running of the Citrus Heritage Run Half Marathon, 10K & 5K, which unfolds along an out-and-back route that starts and finishes at Riverside’s Arlington Heights Sports Park, and features a challenging and scenic course.
As mentioned above, the race begins near Arlington Heights Park on Victoria Avenue in Riverside, a city of more than 310,000 people roughly an hour east of Los Angeles and whose history dates back to the 1870s, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent a pair of small orange trees to a local resident named Eliza Tibbets.
After she planted the trees in what turned out to be the perfect soil and climate for growing citrus fruits, word spread about the region’s sweet and flavorful oranges.