I found some additional notes I wote about the CIM Marathon...Here they are.

CIM (California International Marathon) what a great race!

Now that I’ve actually done it I would highly recommend it to you guys. The course is very nice, great support and spectators and best of all excellent weather.

I actually decided to run this race last year from a recommendation from DerHammer (I think it was after I had trained for the SA Rock-N-Roll Marathon and had to drop down to the Half Marathon because of the hot weather). I decided to go to Sacramento to try and PR for another Boston BQ.

My training has been a little disappointing leading up to the race with the exception of the last couple of weeks where I finally began feeling good…with the exception of my foot. I have what the doctor calls “2^nd Metatarsal Overload” and it may require surgery to fix it. I have had two injections, one on Friday before the race to relieve the pain. We’ll see about that..?

I planned my race pace based on a racing calculator (www.findmymarathon.com/paceband.php) that I found. It takes into consideration your  goal pace, target effort throughout the race and the course profile. It worked very well for me in the Army Marathon and in this marathon too.

Going out my plan was to run a very conservative first half and then an aggressive second half. I knew if I ran to hard and elevated my HR early in the race that I would bonk and not finish strong. As you can see I did exactly what I had planned except for a few seconds loss here and there. I pretty much walked at every water station to make sure I hydrated well. I also was able to run with a couple of girls for the first half that were pacing for a 3:25-30 marathon. I broke my miles into 5 mile increments, the same way I’ve been doing it in all my long training runs with the intention to drop the average pace at each set of five. As you can see I did pretty well at that except for the last five (7:39, 7:37, 7:31, 7:24, 7:29…5 mile averages).

Throughout the race I felt under control watching my HR trying to make sure, even on the up hills, my HR didn’t spike over 160 bpm until after mile 20. It did begin to spike above 160 at mile 18 but at that point it was time to push and I couldn’t hold back. On miles 22, 24, 26 I walked twice and as you can see it cost me some extra time. My legs were really burning and I thought it best to give them a little extra rest to make sure I didn’t completely burn out.  

Below is my original entry:

Some Race notes... CIM is a great course. I was lucky an hit it on a perfect day (temperature was 54 at the start) for me with it not being too hot or too cold. The humidity was pretty high at about 90 percent but it didn't seem to bother me too much with the lower temperature. I was expecting a much bigger "feel" to the race knowing that it was a very popular fast run. The atmosphere was much more layed back than some of the other marathons I have run. The crowds at the start weren't bad and they had plenty of port-a-potties. 

I used the race pace calculator (www.findmymarathon.com/paceband.php) to help me with my pacing. I had used it when I ran the Army Marathon and it seemed to work very well. It allows you to pick your paces based on the specific course and then adjust based on your strategy (conservative,even,aggressive, very aggressive splits,etc.). I chose very a conservative start with a very aggressive negative split for the finish knowing how I like to run. I also added in my own HR averages based on all of my other races and training runs. I believe I hit my goals about as close as I could expect as you can see from my comparrison chart. At this point I'm not really sure what I could have done better other than be in better shape or simply exerted more effort earlier in the race but based on my slowed pace on mile 26 and my elevated HR I'm pretty sure I would have just blown up earlier in the race.

Stopping for now...I'll write some details on the actual race soon...

I've been comparing some of my target numbers verses actual. Here are the comparrisons.

3:18:40