CIM - Las Vegas Double Report - Part I: California Love

This report is going to be so massive, that I had to break it into multiple parts.  Part one describes how this all came about, and includes my CIM race report.

The Plan

So.  How in the hell did this scheme of running a balls to the wall marathon at the California International Marathon in Sacramento (CIM) in the morning and then hopping a flight and running the Rock and Roll Las Vegas half later that day get started?  It started with one man's idea.  That man's name is Paul, otherwise known as "screaminzab":

The post that started it all.  Link to this page in the 3:20 thread.

At this point I had probably been posting in the thread for maybe a couple of months, so people didn't know me too well yet, but the outlandish challenge involved in pulling this off intrigued me.  There were so many things that could go wrong.  You have a bad race and DNF, and can't get to the airport on time.  The flight gets delayed indefinitely due to bad weather, or a pilot calling in sick, or a broken plane.  You get stuck in traffic on the way to the airport.  You make it to Vegas, but are in such terrible condition, that you DNS Vegas...on and on and on.

Initially at that time I showed interest in doing both full marathons, and I was invited to a Facebook group that quickly formed to discuss the details of the event; this quickly degenerated into dick and ball jokes and I immediately liked where things were heading.  But after some more contemplation and not having a ton of experience in endurance events, I gave up the notion of doing the double and instead decided to concentrate solely on racing CIM.  My wife was making plans to run Vegas as part of a bachelorette weekend, so I decided that I would still enjoy the challenge of being a part of the "make the flight" portion of the event and support the guys doing the double in any way I could.

Eventually plans came together, we coordinated the needed flights, and registered for the races.  I arranged to host the afterparty at the Media Suite at Mandalay Bay after consulting with a woman named Weelowie (who I initially thought was a man at first), who I am pretty sure just goes by Weelowie and has no second name (kinda like Pele and Madonna).  Regardless, the plans came together and I was incredibly excited for the weekend!

Training and Race Goals

After my 3:06 effort at Toronto, I had seven weeks to prepare for CIM, and used the 8-weeks between marathons schedule in Advanced Marathoning, with a few tweaks.  My 4th peak week (3 weeks from CIM) I ran a 20, just to give me a confidence boost in my endurance, and I also changed the 3x1M workout 10 days out to 5x1k which I liked better.  Aside from that I pretty much followed the plan as written.  My miles per week from Toronto to CIM were as follows:  17, 41, 58, 65, 58, 46, then 20 miles pre-race.  So pretty conservative, really.  The main goal was to stay healthy and try to squeeze in just a little bit of training to try and get that little added "oomph" necessary to make CIM a great race.

I went into this race extremely relaxed, feeling like the hard work that I had put in earlier in the year would hopefully carry me.  I didn't have huge expectations...in fact I think I was equally as excited to meet my 3:20 forum friends and hang out in Vegas than I was to race a marathon.  However, I did want to beat my Toronto time, and really wanted to go sub-3:05 to prove to myself I could do it after not hitting that mark in Toronto.  I also felt that I ran a few of the early miles in Toronto too fast, so I wanted to make sure I didn't make that mistake again.  I just didn't have enough confidence to make CIM a sub-3 attempt, so I set out to try and run a conservative first half, and use the 3:05 pacer to keep myself in check, and if I had gas in the tank at 20, then I would let it rip and see what I could pull off.

Matt (ljshores_runner) also did a great job prepping me for the course.  The day before the race, shortly after I flew into town, he walked me over to the finish area and described the course in great detail and gave me a few really helpful tips - two of which were to be careful about spending energy on the uphills, as there are quite a few in the first half, and to count the streets until the finish.  This proved to be extremely valuable advice.

Race Day

I slept like coca the night before the race, which is not unusual.  I woke up before my alarm went off at around 4:15 and got ready.  My roommate Steve (Texas Tax Man from the 3:20) had just completed The North Face Challenge 50-miler in San Francisco the previous day, so I was trying to be as quiet as possible to let him rest.  He did manage to wish me good luck and ask if I needed anything before I left, to which I cheerfully replied "nope" and he went back to bed.  I met Matt  at 5am to head to the bus and met Holly (Spinderella) for the first time.

I rode the bus to Folsom with RunRonRun from the California forum.  Great guy, we chatted quite a bit about running, family, balancing the two.  Really enjoyed that and it helped relax me a lot.

After some mishaps on the part of our driver, we arrived at the start with plenty of time.  After a quick poo in porta-potty row (seriously there were like a billion porta-potties) I tossed my gear check bag in a van and made it to the start corral.  Saw the 3:05 pacer and lined up a few feet behind him.  The national anthem was sung, the horn went off, and off we went.

(Note that all splits are 1.01 mile auto-splits on my Garmin...I set it to 1.01 miles because I'm usually bad at running the tangents, and I find that this matches the mile signs better without having me remember to hit the lap button manually)

First few miles:  7:17, 7:07, 7:07, 7:11.  I always love how everyone seems to sprint off the line.  I just try to slowly work up to pace in the first mile.  It's all downhill, so I am feeling pretty lazy running 7:17 for the first mile.  By the time mile 4 rolls around, the 3:05 pace team is out of sight and I should probably start working a little harder.  I am having zero problems with the early hills, just trying to keep my effort as even as possible.  I am having a blast running the downhills though.  Somewhere I read Scott Douglas talk about downhills:  Try not to brake on them and position your body perpendicular to the ground and let gravity do the work.  Or something like that.  It seems to work pretty well.

Next few miles:  7:06, 7:05, 7:05, 7:09, 7:08.  Pace is slightly faster than these splits indicate and I'm in a good groove now with the rolling hills.  I am really enjoying this course in the early miles.  The rollers are keeping me interested, and even though the scenery is not amazing, it's pretty enough to entertain me.  Nice fall colors and people out with their dogs, which always makes me smile and think about the time Catherine took our dog to her first road race in Batavia.  I remember hitting the 9 mile mark and thinking to myself how quickly the first third of the race went by.

Just hanging out, enjoying the run.

Rest of the first half:  6:57, 7:04, 7:00, 6:59.  There were some big downhills through here and picked up quite a bit of ground.  Somewhere in here I spotted the 3:05 pacer and worked on slowly reeling them in.  One thing I loved about this course was that there were very few turns and lots of long straightaways.  You would think that would get boring but since the course was rolling, you weren't always looking at miles into the distance like you might for a flat race.  There was a half-marathon banner just like in Toronto and I accomplished my goal of running the first half slower than Toronto- 1:32:14.

Next three miles:  7:02, 7:00, 6:54.  I consciously pick up the effort after hitting the half ever so slightly.  I had been inching closer and closer to the pace group and by mile 16 I caught them.  I wasn't breathing heavy at all yet, but during this stretch my left leg started to bother me a bit.  It was just a soreness that started in my calf, and eventually moved to my knee and eventually my hamstring.  It wasn't affecting my gait, but I definitely could feel it and it was annoying.

Hamming it up again.

Next four miles:  7:05, 7:04, 7:05, 7:02.  I ran these four miles with the 3:05 pace group.  Nobody was talking, everyone was dialed in, and that was fine.  My leg continued to bother me, and after a mile with these guys, I wanted to leave them.  I had run the first 16 miles pretty much on my own, and now that I had people to run with, for some reason it made the run go by slower.  These four miles felt like the longest miles of the day.  It made me really antsy to leave the group and I convinced myself to wait until after mile 20 to turn it on, knowing that the last 10k was really fast and that (hopefully) my patience would be rewarded.

Last 10k:  6:51, 6:54, 6;53, 6:53, 6:53, 6:43, :09 (last 0.02).  There was a little banner at mile 20 with a wall design- break through the wall, and that's exactly what I did.  I left the 3:05 group and never looked back.   My leg was feeling better, and it was time to race and I had gas in the tank, so I set out to pick off runners and holy shit did I pick off a ton of them.  Guy with the blue shirt.  Bang!  Girl with the cute arm warmers.  Bang!  Skinny dude that actually turned out to be a chick.  Bam!  It was so awesome.  This is how I like to race.  Maybe I left a little bit of time on the course by saving the effort needed to do this, but it felt great to hammer the end of this race and I feel so much better doing it this way then fading at the end.

Giving the thumbs-up as I'm about to pass hairy shirtless guy, one of many victims in the last 10K

The effort was much harder even though I had only really dropped my pace by 10 seconds per mile.  I kept repeating things in my head to keep the effort going - we have a buddy on the 3:20 thread who is getting checked out for MS and I thought about him often.  I thought about Steve hammering the end of his 50-miler.  I thought about some of the times of my friends I had a chance to beat.  I thought that this might be the last time I race a marathon for a while and to leave whatever I had from this point forward on the course.  All of these things kept me running hard and chasing down runners.

By mile 25 I was working very hard and it was gut check time.  I looked at my watch after crossing the mile marker and thought I saw 2:54:x and thought I had an outside chance at 3:01:x and so I gave that last mile everything I had. I was counting down the streets like Matt showed me and that really helped motivate me and break the last mile down into smaller parts.  Looked for Steve as I was passing the Hyatt but no dice.  Looked down at my watch and 3:01 was gone but 3:02 was still very much a possibility.  I ran as hard as I could those last few meters and I would not let 3:02 slip.  Crossed the finish at 3:02:50 feeling totally spent.  Collected myself after a minute or two and did a little celebration fist.  I was really excited that I not only broke 3:05 but broke 3:03!  Fantastic.

Striking the pose at the finish.

So a 3+ minute PR for me and about a 2:35 negative split.  Very, very happy with that, and this was the race I thought I could have (and maybe should have) had in Toronto had the conditions been better and I had run a little smarter.  It was also the race I needed to validate a sub-3 attempt the next time out...whenever that is.

Ron, Matt and I at the finish

Next up - Part II!