As some of you know I have been training for triathlons and marathons lately and have not really been riding much.
Today was the 26th running of the California International Marathon (aka CIM) in Sacramento, CA.
I've been training for this race since I got home from the summer NE MonkeyFest. My training regime is detailed here:
Hal Higdon Advanced II
Now I'm a slacker by nature and I live alone most of the time on a property 30 minutes outside of the closest decent sized town (Hilo, HI). I'm also kind of busy because I'm supposed to take care of the property I live on (10-30hrs/week), run my business (Wireless ISP, 20-60hrs/week), coach soccer (10hrs/week). So the amount of training I actually did vs. what is called for on Hal Higdon's Advanced II plan was sort of off kilter. I'd estimate that I did about 50% of the training runs called for on the plan.
Now that's sort of insane because I decided to run the CIM as a qualifying race for the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon qualifying time for my age bracket is 3hrs 15minutes. Which translates to about 7:27/mile. That's a pretty brisk pace. Especially if you need to hold it for 26.2 miles. But being as I am an optimist and a fool I was not going to ditch the CIM just because my actual training mileage was, at first glance, insufficient.
Last week my buddy Simon asked me what I thought my chances were for running a qualifying time. I said, "Hmm... I dunno. I mean I can run at race pace for 4 miles, but 26.2 seems a bit of a stretch."
Today dawned chilly and foggy in Folsom, CA. Approximately 36 degrees at race start. And there we all were. over 7000 lunatics wearing shorts, hats and shirts of various arm lengths. When I say "dawned" what I mean is that we were all awake and at the starting line. I think dawn happened shortly after the race started at 7AM. That or the fog and overcast was so thick that dawn might as well have slept in till they started the race. Shortly before the race start, and after I had tossed my bag of extra clothes into the back of the truck that takes your stuff to the finish line, I noticed that I was still wearing my sweatpants. STUPID STUPID STUPID! Oh well. Off they came and onto the side of the road they were tossed. Shortly after that I found the pace runner for the 3:15 group. The CIM is a big qualifying race for Boston and as a result the CIM organizers find volunteers to run various paces so that inexperienced fools like me (did I mention that this was my first ever marathon?) can have some hope of not going out too fast and blowing up.
BANG!
And we're off. The first several miles was wall to wall runners. Most of us cruising along at a nice clip and taking it easy. Lots of people along the course cheering and hollering. Lots of aid stations with water and electrolyte drinks. And every few miles a DJ. First DJ took the prize as he was playing AC/DC's Highway to Hell. ROCK OUT! Local high school cheer squads in most downtowns and major road crossings. Lots of smiles and hootin. And so far so good with regard to me being able to keep up with the 3:15 group.
One of the side benefits of running with a pace group is that many spectators cheer for your pace group. So if you're a lone wolf the act of joining a pace team turns many of the spectators into your cheer squad. I almost felt like they were cheering for me. It was pretty cool.
We cruised along, mile after mile. For some reason the race seemed to be mostly downhill, though there were certainly uphills in there too. In fact the overall course drops 400 feet from start to finish and that is very nice. But I think there was some sort of personal hallucination in there for me as I rarely noticed the uphill portions. In fact I can only think of three or four of them several hours after the race. Around mile 18 or 19 I started doing the thing that is often a sign of fatigue for me. I started counting down the miles. We passed the wall (a symbolic wall put up at to remind people that they may run into the crushing wall of fatigue, cramps and defeat) just before mile marker 21. At each side of the wall were people dressed up as the grim reaper. Nice touch.
I had been feeling pretty good so far. At the 20 mile marker I realized, "I really have a shot at this. I can pull this mother off!" All I had to do was keep it at the pace. One foot in front of the other. Unbelievable based upon this being my first marathon and my training having been approximately half of what it should have been. I smiled and thought of the condescending guy from yesterday at registration who had sort of sneered when I said I was planning to do a 3:15 and then run his mouth a bit about people who only run 30-40 miles per week and are out there for their first marathon who think they can do a 3:15. I said nothing to him while he did his low key mini-rant, but it had motivated me and it felt good to be close to proving him wrong.
Shortly after the 21 mile marker our pace guy picked it up. Or I slowed the heck down. ruh-roh. I had been tracking our pace and according to the folks at each mile marker we had been doing 7:29s or 7:28s so far. That's a few seconds shy of our 3:15 goal. Just after mile 21, on an uphill from an underpass onto a bridge a gap opened. Maybe Bob, our pace guy, had just re-figured his math and realized that we needed to pick it up. I grimly held on and sung "Cochise" to myself under my breath (awesome tune for motivating me). And they kept pulling away. Each mile saw them widen the gap by another 10 or 20 yards. Fu ken a.....
And I reached mile 24. And my watch told me something like 3:01. And I had about 14 minutes to complete 2.2 miles. I had already left a lot of my legs behind me. My calves were bitching and tight from lactic acid. It was time to get it in gear and drop two seven minute miles if I wanted to run Boston in 2009.
So as we entered the downtown area of Sacramento I dug for it. I put the pain to the side as much as I could and quickened my tempo. And I'll be damned if I didn't start passing people. At one of the corners our pace guy had stopped and was cheering for us stragglers. "Pain is temporary!" he yelled as he waved his 3:15 sign. So I kept digging for it. "Guts guts guts guts," I kept saying. And finally the palm trees appeared that line the property where the state capitol building is located and where the finish line was located. But what a long bloody line of palm trees. "Guts guts guts guts!" and I turned the 2nd to last corner and peeked at my watch, 3:14 and change. Pound pound pound. Huffing and chugging my way around the last turn into the final 50 yards. 3:14:28 on the clock as I turned that corner and "sprinted" to the line.
And I did it! 3:14:40 plus or minus a few seconds!
Afterwards my legs locked up faster than I could believe and I started going hypothermic. Space blanket or no I had very little left in the way of heat generation. Luckily I didn't pass out or need medical, but it was one of those classic teeth chattering like a typewriter moments.
I'm really glad to have pulled off my goal. I still don't really believe it. My longest pace run in training was 10 miles and I could only hold 7:47 during that run. To have done 7:27 almost right on the nose for the full 26.2 blows my mind. Until I try and stand up and walk around. Then I remember what I had to go through to pull it off as I hobble around my friend's apartment like and old man.
sorry if this is long winded, rambling, full of awful spelling and grammar problems, ridiculous sentence structure, etc. I just barfed it all out and have done no editing or revisions, but wanted to share this awesome experience with my monkeys while it was still fresh in my mind.
Today was the 26th running of the California International Marathon (aka CIM) in Sacramento, CA.
I've been training for this race since I got home from the summer NE MonkeyFest. My training regime is detailed here:
Hal Higdon Advanced II
Now I'm a slacker by nature and I live alone most of the time on a property 30 minutes outside of the closest decent sized town (Hilo, HI). I'm also kind of busy because I'm supposed to take care of the property I live on (10-30hrs/week), run my business (Wireless ISP, 20-60hrs/week), coach soccer (10hrs/week). So the amount of training I actually did vs. what is called for on Hal Higdon's Advanced II plan was sort of off kilter. I'd estimate that I did about 50% of the training runs called for on the plan.
Now that's sort of insane because I decided to run the CIM as a qualifying race for the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon qualifying time for my age bracket is 3hrs 15minutes. Which translates to about 7:27/mile. That's a pretty brisk pace. Especially if you need to hold it for 26.2 miles. But being as I am an optimist and a fool I was not going to ditch the CIM just because my actual training mileage was, at first glance, insufficient.
Last week my buddy Simon asked me what I thought my chances were for running a qualifying time. I said, "Hmm... I dunno. I mean I can run at race pace for 4 miles, but 26.2 seems a bit of a stretch."
Today dawned chilly and foggy in Folsom, CA. Approximately 36 degrees at race start. And there we all were. over 7000 lunatics wearing shorts, hats and shirts of various arm lengths. When I say "dawned" what I mean is that we were all awake and at the starting line. I think dawn happened shortly after the race started at 7AM. That or the fog and overcast was so thick that dawn might as well have slept in till they started the race. Shortly before the race start, and after I had tossed my bag of extra clothes into the back of the truck that takes your stuff to the finish line, I noticed that I was still wearing my sweatpants. STUPID STUPID STUPID! Oh well. Off they came and onto the side of the road they were tossed. Shortly after that I found the pace runner for the 3:15 group. The CIM is a big qualifying race for Boston and as a result the CIM organizers find volunteers to run various paces so that inexperienced fools like me (did I mention that this was my first ever marathon?) can have some hope of not going out too fast and blowing up.
BANG!
And we're off. The first several miles was wall to wall runners. Most of us cruising along at a nice clip and taking it easy. Lots of people along the course cheering and hollering. Lots of aid stations with water and electrolyte drinks. And every few miles a DJ. First DJ took the prize as he was playing AC/DC's Highway to Hell. ROCK OUT! Local high school cheer squads in most downtowns and major road crossings. Lots of smiles and hootin. And so far so good with regard to me being able to keep up with the 3:15 group.
One of the side benefits of running with a pace group is that many spectators cheer for your pace group. So if you're a lone wolf the act of joining a pace team turns many of the spectators into your cheer squad. I almost felt like they were cheering for me. It was pretty cool.
We cruised along, mile after mile. For some reason the race seemed to be mostly downhill, though there were certainly uphills in there too. In fact the overall course drops 400 feet from start to finish and that is very nice. But I think there was some sort of personal hallucination in there for me as I rarely noticed the uphill portions. In fact I can only think of three or four of them several hours after the race. Around mile 18 or 19 I started doing the thing that is often a sign of fatigue for me. I started counting down the miles. We passed the wall (a symbolic wall put up at to remind people that they may run into the crushing wall of fatigue, cramps and defeat) just before mile marker 21. At each side of the wall were people dressed up as the grim reaper. Nice touch.
I had been feeling pretty good so far. At the 20 mile marker I realized, "I really have a shot at this. I can pull this mother off!" All I had to do was keep it at the pace. One foot in front of the other. Unbelievable based upon this being my first marathon and my training having been approximately half of what it should have been. I smiled and thought of the condescending guy from yesterday at registration who had sort of sneered when I said I was planning to do a 3:15 and then run his mouth a bit about people who only run 30-40 miles per week and are out there for their first marathon who think they can do a 3:15. I said nothing to him while he did his low key mini-rant, but it had motivated me and it felt good to be close to proving him wrong.
Shortly after the 21 mile marker our pace guy picked it up. Or I slowed the heck down. ruh-roh. I had been tracking our pace and according to the folks at each mile marker we had been doing 7:29s or 7:28s so far. That's a few seconds shy of our 3:15 goal. Just after mile 21, on an uphill from an underpass onto a bridge a gap opened. Maybe Bob, our pace guy, had just re-figured his math and realized that we needed to pick it up. I grimly held on and sung "Cochise" to myself under my breath (awesome tune for motivating me). And they kept pulling away. Each mile saw them widen the gap by another 10 or 20 yards. Fu ken a.....
And I reached mile 24. And my watch told me something like 3:01. And I had about 14 minutes to complete 2.2 miles. I had already left a lot of my legs behind me. My calves were bitching and tight from lactic acid. It was time to get it in gear and drop two seven minute miles if I wanted to run Boston in 2009.
So as we entered the downtown area of Sacramento I dug for it. I put the pain to the side as much as I could and quickened my tempo. And I'll be damned if I didn't start passing people. At one of the corners our pace guy had stopped and was cheering for us stragglers. "Pain is temporary!" he yelled as he waved his 3:15 sign. So I kept digging for it. "Guts guts guts guts," I kept saying. And finally the palm trees appeared that line the property where the state capitol building is located and where the finish line was located. But what a long bloody line of palm trees. "Guts guts guts guts!" and I turned the 2nd to last corner and peeked at my watch, 3:14 and change. Pound pound pound. Huffing and chugging my way around the last turn into the final 50 yards. 3:14:28 on the clock as I turned that corner and "sprinted" to the line.
And I did it! 3:14:40 plus or minus a few seconds!
Afterwards my legs locked up faster than I could believe and I started going hypothermic. Space blanket or no I had very little left in the way of heat generation. Luckily I didn't pass out or need medical, but it was one of those classic teeth chattering like a typewriter moments.
I'm really glad to have pulled off my goal. I still don't really believe it. My longest pace run in training was 10 miles and I could only hold 7:47 during that run. To have done 7:27 almost right on the nose for the full 26.2 blows my mind. Until I try and stand up and walk around. Then I remember what I had to go through to pull it off as I hobble around my friend's apartment like and old man.
sorry if this is long winded, rambling, full of awful spelling and grammar problems, ridiculous sentence structure, etc. I just barfed it all out and have done no editing or revisions, but wanted to share this awesome experience with my monkeys while it was still fresh in my mind.
Holy Crap! 
that's pretty badass that there are volunteers to pace you.
