CIM Marathon

Race Information

• What? California International Marathon
• When? December 8th, 2024
• Distance: 26.2 miles (42.2 km)
• Where? Sacramento, CA, USA
• Website: CIM
• Strava Activity: Strava
• Finish Time: 2 hours 48 minutes and 17 seconds

Goals

Preamble

CIM was an interesting race for me, for 2024 I had set myself a few running goals, one of them was to run sub-3 hours at the marathon distance. As part of the plan to accomplish this, I had booked CIM as a last chance race to achieve that goal. After narrowly missing sub-3 at Napa marathon in March by 10 seconds, I managed accomplish this goal in July during the San Francisco Marathon, though only by 38 seconds. This meant an unspoken goal for this year was on the cards, try PB the marathon.

For context, prior to this year my first and only sub-3, was a 2:50 at Edinburgh Marathon in 2018, given I had never repeated that performance or even come close, that result had felt like a fluke, which I guess it was! You may ask why had I not taken a PB as a goal for 2024? Running under 3 hours is a great achieve in of itself, furthermore as I imagine most marathon runners would agree, 10 mins is a hell of a lot of time, and I was absolutely not confident I would be back in that sort of shape. Now that Sub-3 was in the bag, why not roll the dice?

Training

If I’m honest the training for this attempt started on the 1st of January 2024, in total I had stacked 4 training blocks this year.

• Marathon Block 1 (8 weeks) - result 3 hours and 10 seconds
• Marathon Block 2 (18 weeks) - result 2 hours and 59 mins
• Ultra Marathon Block 3: (9 weeks) - result 22ish hours
• Marathon Block 4: This Marathon Block!

If you are curious about my other 3 blocks, feel free to jump over to the respective race reports!

Coming off the 100 mile race, I took 2 full weeks to recover and then had 7 weeks until race day. Hitting the ground running, I was able to quickly start working on higher intensity with slightly reduced milage. Peaking at 90 kms/56 miles a week, whereas during the 100 mile block I had peaked around 116 kms/72 miles. Crucially I was able to hit all my core weekly workouts of: (1) Tempo run (2) Speed session and (3) Long run with Marathon pace segments. Big shout out to the Byxbee Parkrun and various running characters who made these runs much more enjoyable and held me accountable to hitting my splits! Dan, C.J. Boris, Mark & Edward amongst others… and a regular virtual accountably push from Bre!

Whilst there were 7 weeks until marathon day, practically speaking the block ended up being only 4 weeks long, why so short?

Reason 1: Berkley Half Marathon

I hadn’t got a chance to race a road half marathon during 2024, and with the training going so well I last minute decided it would be rude not to enter a Half Marathon and try PB. The race went fantastically well, and I managed to run a 1:18:29, which I was very pleased with, beating my previous 6-year old PB by 2 mins. That said, I hadn’t held back during the race and with the course having a decent amount of elevation in it I felt the fatigue in my legs. The following week, I decided to reduce both milage and intensity, managing 60kms/37 miles of easy running.

Reason 2: Post-half sickness

A couple days after the Half I came down with a pretty bad flu/cold, I had to skip the local 5km turkey trot (where I had wanted to use as a 5km PB attempt), and it took a full 2 weeks to recover. During that period my throat was crazy painful, sleep was challenging and unsparingly I felt pretty bad!

Due to these 2 reasons, I had 3 weeks of taper, with the sickness resulting in a perceived loss of fitness post Berkley Half. As race day loomed, my heart said, “go for your A goal”, but my mind told me it was going to be hard to hang on for the whole distance and maybe I should be less aggressive. I waited until the day before the race to finally commit to go for sub-2:45 from the start of the race.

Before the race

Carb-loading has been quite the rage recently, and I’ve done own experimenting with this aspect of running. For myself I’ve settled on a slight variation to most of the advice I hear online, if you are curious:

• Sunday to Thursday: Reduce total calories and try avoid too many carbs - goal lose some weight to offset the carb load
• Friday: Hit the carbs hard - somewhere from 5 to 10g of carbs per kg body weight - goal load da carbs
• Saturday: Lighten up the carbs - eat to hunger - goal don’t feel bloated on race day

This strategy came out of my experience eating 10g carbs/kg for the 2 days before the 100 mile race, and on race day I felt quite bloated. Personally I prefer to feel a little lighter on race day for the mental benefit. It helps that I know I can ingest carbs pretty consistently during races so I am less worried about not having enough during these “shorter” races.

As with Napa my friend Edward flew up from LA for the race. After a very quick race expo, we headed over to Folsom to meet up with another friend Boris to grab an early dinner. A very adventurous Chicken Carbonara meal for all 3 of us. I would love to say I had an early night, but as usual I tossed-and-turned and feel asleep around 11:30pm.

Race Day

Waking up at 330am sharp I immediately consumed a Maurten 320 mix, 1 bagel with PB & Nutella and a hot latte! Delicious start to the day.

After a quick shower, I threw on my race clothes, filled up another bottle of Maurten 320 mix for the race and drove over to the collection/bus point.

Parked in the Cinema parking lot, and we jumped on a bus. After 15 minutes of driving, our driver suddenly stopped the bus and turned around to face the runners, he didn’t know which direction to go to get to the race start! Thankfully a few people on the bus had their phones, and we managed to figure out the right route - momentary stress over. This was probably the only part of the day that was a bit haphazard in the whole CIM event organization.

Our bus arrived at the start area a few minutes later, and I was impressed with the overall race setup. Tons of porta potties, very clear corrals and signage - overall super well organized. SF Marathon: please take notes on how to organize a race start!

The weather was perfect - no breeze and cold outside. In fact, it was so cold that my extra layers were not enough, and so I hoped on another heated bus to warm up. Boris decided to come with me, whilst Edward decided to head to his starting corral. A few minutes later Boris decided to head out to his start area. I decide to wait until 6:45 to make my way over to the sub-2:50 Corral. I was hoping to see a few of my local running friends who were running various times around 3 hours, and just before we started I heard my name being shouted out and was able to say hello to Mark (congrats on your great race). A moment later we were off!

Start to 21 KMs

And straight down hill we went! Having read a few race reports and with my SF Marathon knowledge, I was extra careful to not go out too hot on either the up or down hills. In fact my hill strategy turned out to be slightly slower and faster than most other runners, which meant I was overtaken on most ascents and then I overtook on the descent. I focussed on running even effort, which meant around 4:00km/up and 3:50km/down, averaging 3:55/km (6:26, 6:10 and 6:18 per a mile respectively) - bang on my marathon A goal time, I was feeling good though I knew there was a very long way to go… One downside of my pacing strategy was that due to the mismatch in pace between myself and others, I wasn’t really able to run in a pack or form a group. Instead I attempted to latch on to people doing similar paces during either the ascent or descent. I tried extra hard to find someone on downhills to avoid the very minor wind, often this meant getting behind a runner for a few minutes and then moving to the next person as their pace slowed.

My gel and aid station strategy has not changed much since SF Marathon. The only major change is that I now use a mixture of Maurten, SIS Beta Fuel and Precision Hydration gels. This may seem like a bit of a wild mix, but I find all the flavours acceptable. My issue with gels during a marathon turns out to be texture fatigue. So I rotate through these 3 brands, which all have very different textures, allowing me keep choking down the calories!

The very regular aid stations were well organized and easy to access, during the race my strategy was:

1. Consume my Maurten 320 over the first 5kms
2. Consume 1/2 a gel every 20 mins or so.
3. Drink as little water as possible, ideally none
4. Pour 2 cups of cold water over my head / back at every aid station

I followed step 2 very roughly, and varied my intake based on when I was feeling good or bad. For example, when I felt good I consumed a whole gel a couple times to give me a longer break between consumption… I also tried to target the caffeine gels at specific times (1) 20 mins before start (2) after 30 mins (3) after 90 mins.

Step 4 was a new addition to this marathon, over this year I’ve found I run hot, inspired by ultra running where using an ice-bandanna to keep cool is quite common, I tried pouring water all over myself during Berkley Half Marathon to achieve a similar cooling effect - this proved very successful at keeping me feeling cold. Though at one point I poured 3 cups of water over me and I ended up with a head freeze, gah!

The rest of the kms ticked by swiftly and I felt reasonable during this section. I will note that the race has pretty consistent climbing and descending the whole first half, whilst CIM is a net-downhill course, the effort evens out. Personally I think this makes the race no easier nor harder than a flat marathon, around the same effort but with a bit more of a pacing challenge in the first half.

21kms to end

Having hit the half-way point at 1:23:15, I knew it was going to be challenging to speed up to hit my A goal pace, needing to hit a 1:22 ish negative split. Rather than fixate on my pace, I continued to try maintain a steady even tempo effort. This resulted in a minor drop of pace to around 4mins/km or 6:29 min/mile, with some variation based on the now minor ascents and descents.

Given that most of the elevation changes were over, I was able to be much more consistent with pacing and this meant that I could work with a few other runners. I spent a lot of this period running behind or next to a female runner who had a very similar pacing strategy, I managed to grab her and the end of the race and thank her for the help! During this period I was overtaken by 2 young NAIA runners who looked really strong, I decided to stick behind them so they could take the very mild breeze and use them to increase my pace. Eventually they pulled away, though I vaguely remember passing them towards the end of the race.

As we neared the 30km mark, the infamous bridge was nearly upon us, having read various race reports I imagined a very steep sharp climb that really kicked you in the butt. In reality it was a pretty short gentle ascent, I slowed down a little to avoid overexertion and I was in the final stretch!

The last 5km was a bit of a time vortex with everyone in various stages of pain: those kicking (sometimes too early), those walking, and those going steady. I fell into the last category and kept grinding it out, I wouldn’t say I was in a lot of pain but I certainly didn’t feel comfortable. My legs felt like they could spasm or lock up at any point! I was overtaken, I overtook - I used both as motivation to keep the effort going, latching on to the energy of the speedsters and feeling good about being able to sustain my pace when passing. I felt bad for the walkers, as I have been there myself, twice! The crowd support was really great at this point with tons of exuberant people shouting words of encouragement. Sadly my energy was fully diverted to running and all I could do was raise a “Rock on” with my right hand meekly in thanks for the support. On that note, shout-out to Will who cheered me on at random points, thanks bud!

Earlier in the race, a little after the half-way point, I had mentally settled on trying to land somewhere in the lower 2:48s or upper 2:47s depending on how long the course ran and how early I could muster a finishing kick. I had assumed 100 to 200m of extra distance on the watch even with running tangents. As 41 kms appeared on my watch I started to increase the pace with a final kick well under 3mins/km. With a loud shout I was done.

Woohoo, New PB! 2 hours, 48 mins and 17 seconds - overall a 2 minute and 1 second PB. Fantastic.

Wrap, Reflections & What’s next?

After stumbling over to my drop bag, I swiftly changed into some warm clothes which were dry and made my way back to the race exit to cheer in friends who were completing their race. The day was littered with amazing results, so great to see so many folks accomplishing their goals.

I was starting to feel tired, so caught the bus back to Folsom and after some food with friends headed back to San Francisco!

What about my result? Whilst objectively my Berkley Half-Marathon result was stronger, I know from experience how hard it is to land a great marathon, for this reason I’m very proud of the result, in fact I think it’s my best race ever. I certainly can’t knock a 12 minute reduction in Marathon time over roughly 8 months!

What makes CIM great? This is my 8th Marathon Venue - Montreal, York, Edinburgh, London, San Francisco, Napa, LA, Sacramento - and the aspect that really stood out to me was the high concentration of runners at the relatively quicker pace I was running. I never felt alone during the race which made the run much more enjoyable - I have effectively solo run many of my marathons which is much harder mentally. So if you wanna run with a bunch of other runners, CIM is a great option!

What’s next? Whilst I am still trying to structure my 2025 calendar - I have some relatively ambitious goals between 100 mile racing and marathons - the only sure thing right now is Boston Marathon… Until then, CIM you later!

P.S. One final challenge of 2024 to go!