This has been my fourth year in a row running CIM. The previous three have all produced PRs, so I was definitely returning to the trough for more. I had seemed to be slowing down in the spring, having run a 1:36 half marathon, and the Napa Marathon in 3:24.
So a I took a two week break, then worked up to lots of volume, 70-80 mile weeks, while also doing weekly track workouts. Another half would have been a good pointer to how things were going, but I never got around to it.
The arrows started to point up. I got a small PR in a tricky 10K at Lake Merritt. The two cross country races where I ran the same courses as last year were also course PRs.
So what would be a good goal, assuming conditions were suitable? Well Duh. I had been aiming for 3:15 last year and missed, so it was time to knock that down before it became an insuperable barrier in my mind. What else?

The New York Marathon is changing it’s rules for guaranteed entry times. They used to be just a little harder than Boston qualifications, but too many people were qualifying so they are toughening it up for 2013.  So for instance a man under 40 would need to run under 2:45, and I would need to get under 3:14. I have sometimes felt envious of those who have struggle to qualify for Boston. Not for the struggle part, but for the huge sense of achievement when they get it. My BQ time is 3:40, which um, lacks excitement. But 3:14 could be my reachable Holy Grail.

Last year I followed the 3:15 pace group, but eventually fell off it after some non-ideal pacing. The CIM course is easy to foul up on. The early downhills tempt a runner into going too fast, while the rolling hills are short enough to invite attacking at constant pace. This approach, while satisfying, burns precious fuel that needs to be conserved for the fast final miles.

My training was extemporized around a weekly framework. A track workout on Tuesday and something else challenging at the weekend, either a race, long run, or combination run with faster miles. Weekly mileage was in the 70s with the biggest week at 83.

People.

Early in the program a suggestion had cropped up in the Runner’s World Online forum that I frequent, which I described to Cathi:
“CIM is on the morning of the 4th, the Las Vegas marathon is in the evening of the same day, and there’s a flight…”
“Hahahahaha!, I’ll go straight to Vegas and scrape up what’s left of you, then.”
“I’m not going to do it.”
“Oh.”
But others would, and we had a get-together at the Spaghetti Factory on the Saturday evening. Some familiar faces were there, including James, who has run three or four marathons with me. “With” in this case means “Some considerable distance on front of”, but we seem to have a knack for bumping into one another at expos. He was doing the double, and was planning to run CIM at about 3:20 to leave something in the tank for Las Vegas. 3:20 was considered the cutoff for making the plane. At the dinner he was talked into trying for a PR (sub-2:58), then risking total flameout in the evening. Excellent advice as it turned out. Steve, who was doing his own version of the double, arrived to applause. He had run the North Face 50-miler in Marin that morning, cutting nearly two hours off his previous year’s time, and would be running Las Vegas the next day. In the company of these people, the prospect of attempting to PR at 26.2 the next day lost all it’s gravitas. It was as if I were about to run a 10K turkey trot. There were some new faces present, including Joel, about whom more later.

The Race

It was clear, chilly and windless in Folsom that morning. Predictably I ran into James at the bag drop. He showed me his well-stuffed CIM drop bag. “Everything is in there, street clothes, phone, everything.” Wow, talk about traveling light. He headed forward while I lined up near the 3:15 pace group. I asked the leader if he was the same guy that had led this group last year. No. I considered this excellent news.
I hung back a little as we surged to the line, wanting to take care of my own pacing until the pace leader proved himself. Even at a runners race like CIM there are a few rubes who start too close to the front, and once I’d weaved though them I was about 30yards back from the pace leader’s stick. Perfect. Nothing to do but relax, think about good form on the downgrade, and keep an eye on that stick. I was not wearing my Garmin, having reverted to the old-school method of stopwatch and pace-band (7:25 per mile, 3:14:27 finish). Nothing to obsess over until that first mile marker came into view. This pace felt more like casual group run than a race. What a lovely morning!
The leader was scoring points with me. There was an abrupt little rise just before the first mile marker, and he slowed quite a bit. First mile 7:35, so far so good. now for the real test. I missed the mile 2 marker, but mile 3 (22:30) revealed he had given up a little bit more and was in no big hurry to claw back those seconds. Excellent! I moved up level with him, complimented him on a good job, and looked around to see if I recognized anyone. Ther was Joel. He was a very fast runner at shorter distances who had yet to run a satifactory marathon. On top of that he had had a dose of strep throat that week. “Hi. How are you feeling?” “”Pretty good at the moment, but I always hit the wall at 23 miles.” “Don’t say always, say up till now.” I advised. The only other runner whose name I knew was because she had felt-tipped it down the sides of her legs. “Go Brittany!” “Ha! Apparently they don’t do that here.” She was from Detroit.

We ticked off the miles over the rolling terrain, 7:16, 7:28, 7:24, 7:25, gradually homing in on the 7:26 average required for 3:15. The leader knew the course well, and would loudly announce upcoming hills and aid stations. After the first relay handover point I found myself ahead of the group and went on autopilot for a little while, then I discovered I could not see the stick behind. Oops, this was too early to be leaving the group, no matter how comfortable I felt. I wanted to make solid sure of beating 3:15 before trying for anything faster. I tried to relax and pretended I was driving a car on empty. Just enough gas pedal to get up this hill, don’t pass that guy, coast down the other side. Relax, relax… After about two miles of this the group caught me again, and I stayed with them for quite a while. 7:33, 7:27, 7:14, 7:23 to mile 11.

I missed mile 12, but mile 13 was 14:49 (7:25 average), and we reached the half in 1:37:16. Still able to do basic math at this point, I thought Hey, we’re now ahead of 3:15 pace, how’d he do that?  Gradually. We were right on my 3:14-and-a-half pace band.

Things got more purposeful now. While the pace was still comfortable, there would be no inadvertent drifting ahead anymore. My disposable water bottle finally ran out at mile 15. One unexpected problem had come up. My gels were in a small 4 oz. flask so that I could avoid the whole rip, squish, sticky fingers dance. Usually I diluted them a little bit but this time I had wanted to get the maximum gooey goodness into the flask. Big mistake. I had to squeeze really hard to get any out, and ended up only consuming about half of the contents. Oh well.  Joel was running a little ahead of the group, and I joined him. “I seem to have got ahead of the plan” He said. Without really discussing it we dropped the pace slightly and started passing people.

7:19, 7:17, 7:19 to mile 16, speeding up a little now than most of the rollers were behind us. My friend Karen, out to support several LMJS runners in the race, intercepted my headband and gloves as I dropped them in front of her. She later commented “They skidded right past me. I was amazed at how fast you were going”

7:17, 7:17, 7:18, 7:20 (some uphill there) to mile 20. Joel was quite entertained by the ‘wall’ archway that we ran through at mile 20, with the grim reaper capering beside the course.

7:17, 7:17, 7:15 to mile 23. The hill to the bridge was the last uphill of any significance, So we just punched over it. This late phase of a race where you are passing people has been described as “assassin mode”. You pick out a runner, reel them in, pick out the next one, etc. This was not so much assassination as massacre, we were passing dozens and dozens of runners. It was good to have someone to run with to help keep a steady pace amongst all these slower runners. Joel was overjoyed not to have experienced the wall this time. “It’s a modern miracle” he exclaimed, and dropped the pace quite a bit. This was faster than I wanted to go, so he waved goodbye and tore off at sub-7 pace.

On my own now, it was time to do some serious work in the last three-plus miles. The pace band put me in sub 3-14 territory but my brain was now in innumerate mode and I wanted to make sure. At one point I had had to remind myself “Er, number on watch lower than number on band, that’s good, right?” The course did a quick left-right onto Sacramento’s L street. Brittany brushed elbows as she took the inside on the second turn. Assassinated! She must have been chasing us hard for several miles. Having passed me she faded a little and I was soon in front again. I saw from the results she finished a few seconds back, so must have witnessed what happened next.

Back at mile 18 or so Joel had remarked “These bottles are a life saver.” My response: “Er yeah. Wait, what? Bottles?”. Since my hand-held ran out I had been drinking from the little cups held out by the volunteers and had failed to notice a table at each station stacked with 12oz water bottles. Thus alerted, I guzzled two of them in the next five miles which turned out to be too much. After the 24 mile marker the queasiness set in. Uh oh. Please go away, I have a race to finish here. I fought for control but it got worse. That mile was unsurprisingly a bit slower at 7:24. By the 25 mile marker it was obvious I was going to be sick. I thought about Meb Keflezighi, who stopped to spew at mile 18 before running a PR at New York this year. Do I have to stop? let’s find out… After a some preliminary sputters, about half a pint of water/gel mix came out in a neat stream and hit the roadway. None on my shirt, Whoohoo! I was going though the final aid station at the time. My sincere apologies to the volunteers and to Brittany for that grossness. The effort of doing it made my head swim, but I felt better after slowing for a few seconds and started running hard again. That was one of my fastest miles at 7:15.

The remaining .2 was disposed of in 1:35 (7:12 pace). I saw Cathi yelling at me in the last 100 yards. She was startled at my slightly early arrival and failed to get a picture. I saw 3:13:low on the finish clock and felt very much better coming up to the line. Someone was handing out cartons of chocolate milk, and I chugged one right down.

Postscript

So: 3:13:14 chip time with a 1:12 negative split. Mission accomplished. Joel must have really hauled ass after leaving me, since he managed a 3:10. I found him with his friend Rachel (3:05) from Australia, gleefully reading splits from their Garmins. I had failed to notice training buddy Bob quietly tailing the 3:15 group. He got a 3:14 PR.
And the Vegas-bound crew? Gone when I got there. James ran a 2:55, Matt a 3:01, Kevin 3:02, all PRs. Paul, whose crazy idea that had been. missed the flight to Sacramento and only ran Vegas. That was a terrible race, so it it was just as well that they slow-jogged it.

The Santa Rosa Marathon is smaller than most – they only got the course certified this year – and is run in attractive surroundings along the banks of Santa Rosa Creek, with around 500 runners each for the full and half marathons. I wanted to try a smaller marathon, and also see what results my current self-designed training program was producing. This mostly consists of high mileage, some track work, and short marathon-pace runs up to 10 miles. My peak week was 90 miles.

We stayed in the Marriott, which is a few minutes walk from the start area. This was a good move since I had no need to join the long potty lines in the park.

I met up with Carrie, an online running friend who lives in the area who had first suggested this race to me. She had recently lost her Garmin and was missing it, so we agreed to run together for the first part of the race.

The organizers were attempting to line up the faster runners (with the women ahead of the men for some reason), but were hampered by the sound system which kept cutting out. In the confusion Carrie ended up two rows in front of me, then we were off. I went out fairly fast in order to catch her up, and could see her looking around for me. “I asked a guy what pace we were going, and he said 6:50, so I thought I’d better slow down a bit.” she explained.

A word on paces. Carrie’s everything-goes-perfectly goal of sub-3:10 would be 7:15 minutes:seconds per mile pace, mine of sub-3:15 would be around 7:26. I was not particularly wedded to that goal though, as the real goal marathon is CIM in December. I really wanted to get some feedback on my training in a full-length race. I had set the Garmin to auto-split at 1.01 miles to compensate for running imperfect tangents, and that came out about right. Those are the mile times I use here, which are somewhat slower than the paces displayed at the time.

After a few hundred yards on the streets we turned onto the trail alongside Santa Rosa Creek. This is a multi-use path, concrete for the early part, which dips under each of the bridges that cross the creek. That first mile came out about right: 7:21 including a little bit of acceleration at the start.Then we got faster: 7:18, 7:06, 7:11, with little surges when we were passing other runners. The Garmin was actually displaying a sub-7 number for a minute or two during this, of which we were both skeptical. Carrie: “It must be the trees. I’m still talking and I don’t think I would be at that pace.”  I was having a good time at this speed, However it was guaranteed that I would be in difficulties if I stayed at this pace much longer. Carrie was looking strong, though, running with impeccable form.

Soon we crossed over the creek for the first time – under the bridge, 180% turn, up the ramp, 90% turn, over the bridge, 90% turn, down the ramp onto the first unpaved section. “Here you go Jim!” Carrie knew I had been apprehensive of the unpaved parts. This softer going did indeed increase the effort level a bit and after a few minutes I decided it was time to dial it back and gradually dropped behind. Carrie seemed to have found her pacing groove now. I let a small cluster of about five runners pass me and then followed them. This was a little lazy of me as they turned out to be poor pacers. They were slowing down already at mile 6, and I fell into a slower groove: 7:20, 7:36, 7:42. They were probably half-marathoners who had gone out too fast. That was stupid of me. I tried to speed up again, picking off the stragglers from the group which was now coming apart. But what with the bridge crossings and gravel, I stayed in the 7:40s all the way to the halfway point. Apart from a few at the aid stations, there had been no spectators out on the trail, so it was nice to be among people again in the start-finish area. A volunteer pointed to a prominent bump in the trail, calling out “Be careful!” Carrie told me later that she had fallen at this spot on her way through. Aha!

 People shake their heads about double-loop marathon courses on the grounds that it’s soul-destroying to head back out onto the same course again. In fact it was just fine, I was now running a familiar course! It was a thinly populated one now that the half-marathoners had gone. I got into a pattern: See a runner up ahead (sometimes two), reel them in, pass them, look for the next victim. I ran the second half slower than the first, but it felt fast because of all the passing I was doing. There is a proportion of marathoners who start to slow down soon after halfway, providing a plentiful supply of people to pass. Since you do not get to see the runners ahead who are maintaining pace, this creates the illusion that you are speeding up and passing everyone on your way to a glorious come-from-behind win. The Garmin exposed the lie by revealing how slow I was in fact going, still in the 7:30s and 40s, with a couple of 7:5x miles where bridge crossings and aid stations were involved. My legs confirmed that they were quite liking this speed thank you very much. They should have been hurting just a little by this point! I rationalized my lassitude by telling myself that I needed to recover quickly after this race to start training for CIM. My age-group position (whatever it was) seemed secure at this point. I had been studying the other runners at the turnarounds. There was one balding guy who looked about the right age, so I asked him how old he was when I caught him. 50-54 age group, it turned out. My bright response to this information: “I’m 56, so you don’t need to worry about me.” was supposed to be good news, but on reflection was probably a cruel blow. Balding Guy, sorry about that if you are out there reading this. Talking to runners as you pass them is something of a minefield. Even an encouraging remark can seem like irony. Oh well.

Coming up to the turnaround at 19 miles, I was surprised to see a young woman who had passed me very strongly in the first half. She heard me coming and put up a fight, surging for a minute or so. I held pace and simply oozed on by when she faltered.

Nearing the finish. Not a crowded race!

And that was about as dramatic as it got. The only time I was passed in the entire second half was by a pair of young guys at mile 23 who were going pretty fast. I surmised they must have started late and were pacing for 3:10 or thereabouts. I could not find any late-starters ahead of me in the results though, so they must simply have been running a strong negative split.

Mile 25: “Oh, we’re nearly there”

Mile 26: “Dammit, I could do with another half mile to catch that next guy!” (But I beat him on chip time)

So, chip time 3:21:53. Half splits were 1:38:53 and 1:42:59, which is quite a big positive split, even though I moved up 18 places in the second half. I can blame some of that on the zippy first four miles, but it was fun having a Carrie’s-eye view of the race for a little while. But mostly there was no incentive to beat myself up in the second half. About 5 minutes off a PR, but encouraging nonetheless. I took home a bottle of wine for winning my age group. Carrie also won her AG, and was 4th female with a  3:12.

Suzette and Larry at the start

We divided into sub-teams of two runners running adjacent legs, and sharing a car. I was with Minori (leg 3) and her boyfriend Chris who did all the driving for us. We had some time to kill, so went back to the house for a while before setting out for the handover point at the start of leg 3. On the way we passed Larry who was tackling the serious uphill of leg 2, from near lake level to 7000 ft. We got Minori to the handoff point in enough time for a bathroom break  before Larry arrived. Her leg was rolling downhill, and she later said it was the toughest thing she has yet done, due to the thin air and downhill pounding.  Chris and I supported her, handing her a bottle about every two miles.  The pullout areas would fill up with support cars doing the same as us, and we would see the same people again and again. We would cheer on the other runners too.

Minori running leg 3 in Nevada

Then it was my turn. The leg started with a downhill, which got me off at a good speed. I was a little worried about the pace. With the altitude and the hills, this 12.2 miles was about equivalent to running a half marathon, but I was almost alone. On a along straight i could only see one runner in front, but he seemed to be getting nearer. It took over a mile to catch him – “Looking strong.” “Thanks, You too” – then I could see the next one and got to work catching him.

The first part of the leg had been shady, and when I merged into the sun it became apparent that my careful preparation had omitted an important item. No sunscreen! I could get severely burned at this altitude. “Need sunblock” I said to Minori as she ran alongside with a Gatorade bottle about a mile later. She handed me a tube at the next available pullout, and I slapped on the goop without slowing down. I somehow missed my shoulders, which came up in blisters later. By the halfway point I had climbed the main hill of the leg and passed some people, was feeling pretty good, then I was passed by a young woman wearing a pink tutu! That open women’s team were all wearing dresses of some sort, and we passed them back later. My team-mates kept reminding me about getting passed though!

On the downhill we passed from Nevada back into California and the terrain started to roll gently. I was having a hard time remembering any of this from the last time I ran it.  The Garmin ticked off the miles, I worked to keep pink tutu in sight, and passed a couple more teams. Before long there was a corner ahead with some runners looking my way. They were there to watch for approaching team-mates. I started my kick, and the handover came into view around the corner. I tagged Debra, and commenced some serious air-sucking. I’m not an asthmatic, but running at 6500 ft gave me some idea what it must be like.

Francisco starts leg 6

I switched cars and helped to support our remaining runners. Debra, Francisco, and Karen. Our last refuelling point was quite coincidentally just outside a really good ice cream place that Suzette knew. We were enjoying our ice creams so much we didn’t quite  make it to the finish in time to see Karen cross the line. We were second out of nine in the mixed masters, in 10 hours 3 minutes. Not bad for a day’s work.

The team at the finish

With just a week since running a 10K PR I was unsure what was in store here. My legs seemed to be in good shape, but the trails not so much. Normally June in the Bay Area is bone dry, but this year it was set to break a century-old record for monthly rainfall in the first few days. On the trails this means mud and plenty of it. This would slow everyone down equally, perhaps some more than me, but who am I trying to kid here? As if I am ever going to place on one of these hilly trail races. Hah!
We started along the paved trail along the lake shore for the first mile. This rolls up and down but was nothing compared to the hills to come. Once again I found myself in the company of Christine, and Debra, who was grumbling about the speed we were starting out. She had a point, this was a bit fast.
Leaving the pavement, I attacked the first hill fairly hard, running most of the way up until it got really steep near the top. The surface was a little slippery but presented few problems. On the descent the cleats on my trail shoes kept things under control and I gained some places.
After a level stretch and a suspension bridge across an arm of the lake, the serious climbing began. The big hill varied in gradient which resulted in a run-walk mix. Things seemed to be going well, and I moved up some more. There was one oldish guy who never seemed to walk, jogging slowly up the steepest gradients. He was a little faster than me on these sections, but I would catch him again on the levels and downs. It was one of these early downs that my race newly ended. My toe caught a protruding rock while I was going fast downhill. I took a couple of big steps before going down, and was able to tuck and roll. A chorus of “Oh my god, are you all right?” from nearby runners, and I jumped back up, retrieved my hat and drink bottle, declared “I’m fine, thank you.” and ran on. I noticed that my right shin was hurting somewhat and looked down to check that that was nothing stuck in it, but it was just scraped.
Shortly after this we came to a fallen tree. There was no getting around it, with the canyon going steeply up on one side and down on the other. It was all branches, with no trunk, so we had to climb over the branches near the top where they converged under gravity. Since I was already banged up and dirty I went fast over this obstacle in about 20 seconds. Some reported taking over a minute to get over it. There were some slippery downhills after this, where I skated the straight route instead of skirting the muddy bits. More gained places.
Near the top of the next uphill I looked around and saw Debra close behind. Not surprising, since this style of running is right up her street.
“So you caught me at last!”
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t fall again.”
“Oh, you saw that?”
“Yes, it was scary!”
She went by. I was paying for my early speed here, but hopefully had enough in the tank for the remaining, mostly downhill, four miles.
It was a bit of a slog. I managed the downhill section OK, but did not have a lot of speed for the rolling section at the end. I had left behind most of my early companions from the hills, but was passed by a couple of younger guys and Barry of LMJS who seems to be running really well at present. I reached the finish in 2:01:51 by the official clock, just about three seconds slower than last year’s time. But there was no mud or treeclimbing last year. I came second in my age group, so perhaps I can place in these trail things after all.

I carpooled up with Debra, Suzette and Karen of the LMJS Womens team. Chatting with the ladies turned out to be a nice low-stress way to approach a race rather than driving solo.  After the usual preliminaries – bathroom, warmup, strides, we lined up in the start area. Since this is a USATF event it was a very strong field, and I took care not to line up too far forward and get sucked out too fast. I had set my Garmin to metric again, with auto-laps at 1km intervals. Target pace would be sub 4:20 minutes/km which if maintained would get me a narrow PR. There were no km markers, but the splits here have been corrected for GPS variance.

The line was crowded, and we were a little sluggish getting away, but once up to speed things were fine. The runners around me were mostly going at the right speed, and the few who were easing up after a too-fast start were soon left astern. Here was Debra, who beat me at Tilden, although I have an edge on her on flat roads like this. I eased ahead and didn’t look round, assuming she would be staying fairly close. She later told me that she did stay in contact for a while before deciding she was not comfortable at that pace and dropping back.  There was a headwind in the early stages, but the trees and houses sheltered us from the worst of it. First three km: 4:21, 4:26, 4:27. This looks a bit slow now, but the numbers I was seeing at the time were about 4 seconds faster.  I must remember to aim a few seconds high when using the Garmin as a pacing tool.

On the return section of the loop I went a little faster, probably aided by the tailwind, and was already passing people. This was not great, since there was no one to latch on to get ‘pulled’ along. I just had to keep passing people and glancing at the Garmin to confirm that I was on pace. 4:18, 4:19, 4:21 for these three km. Very nice pacing, though I say so myself.

As we threaded through the Marin College campus for the first time I head a pair of male voices behind. Who the heck chats in the second half of a 10K? Ultra runners? The subject matter confirmed it: “I saw so-and-so last weekend. We ran 30 miles together.” Yup, ultra guys, and they were about to pass me. When they did, I was surprised to recognize Dean Karnazes. Yup, that guy. What was he doing running a 43-minute 10K? Then I realized that he probably ran upteen miles to get here and would probably run home again too.  This little distraction, along with the twists and turns, had slowed my pace a bit, so I determined to stay within striking distance of Dean and friend, running about 50 yards behind.  Splits: 4:26, 4:25, 4:25.

We went across a bridge and turned back towards the campus. There was a fierce headwind. I had closed a bit on Dean’s group, which had grown to four.  Two runners that they had passed were hanging on grimly in order to draft them. I was fully exposed about 30 yards back and getting killed by the wind. I managed to surge and catch them up, but it was an expensive move. There was little relief once I had caught then since they were now speeding up for that last half mile to the finish.  Urrgh!

We entered the campus once again and the course marshals recognized Dean, grinning as they pointed the way with orange flags. We were out of the wind now, and I started to sag off the back of the group as we entered the running track. My kick was gone thanks to that surge, but it was the right move.  I crossed the line 13 seconds behind Dean, but just 2 seconds adrift on the chip.  That last kilometer took 4:12, for an overall time of 43:44.

A 5 second PR! Thanks DK. I did not place in my age group, but some of the LMJS ladies did, (Laurie, Suzette, and Kate) Much fun all round.

I felt that I was seriously off my game in my run-up to Napa, and ran that race some minutes slower than I felt I should. The symptom were consistent with over-training, although there may have been a dietary deficiency or infection involved. How should not-very-specific problem be approached? I took a cue from Flo of Girl In Motion who saw good results after taking a two week break from running, and did that. On coming back, I endeavoured to introduce more hill running and form drills into the mix, but did not follow a strict plan for the time being. I was running a somewhat lower mileage than I normally do during marathon cycles, and generally took care.
I also took a trip with Cathi to London, where she did some musical work (teaching and a couple of gigs) and we caught up with some of my family. I also watched the London marathon from the kerbside, about 900 meters from the finish. It was interesting to compare the elites with the also-rans. They seem to float along with little expenditure of effort compared to the rest of us ground-pounders. They don’t even seem to be going that fast, thanks to the apparent ease of motion. This does not come across well in photographs but is very apparent when you see it. Here’s Emmanuel Mutai on his way to a course record after he had demolished the opposition with a string of 4:3x miles. He looked pretty relaxed.

And so after a few weeks of lowish mileage, here I was on a start line in Golden Gate Park with a pretty fast bunch of runners, aware that this training reboot would now be tested, even though I had not done any race-specific workouts beyond some 5K-pace pickups during the week. I had put my Garmin into metric mode with kilometer splits, figuring that I would get a useful number that way, and a 20-minute 5K is 4:00 pace, which is a nice refernce point. I would like to run a sub-20 but that could not realistically be expected today. If I looked down and saw 3:xx I should slow down. There were no chips in this race, but I managed to cross the start line within 2-3 seconds of the gun.

The tactic for moderating the initial pace was only partly successful, since I ran the first Km in 3:49. Still, not as outrageously fast as I sometimes commence these things. That was on flat ground along JFK avenue Sometime during the next split we swing toward Stowe lake and went uphill. 4:21 (7:01 pace). Oof! I need to work on my uphill speed! Same story on the rolling track around the lake: 4:20, then we swung back towards the finish: 4:06, 4:07 which was encouraging. I had been running in a cluster of runners all the way (mostly 20-something women from the Impala team for some reason) so had not been able to run the tangents properly. That would account for some of the 80 extra meters that the Garmin measured at 3:55 pace. It was necessary to put on the brakes just short of the line as the finish chute was backed up. Official time 21:04. That is 21 seconds away from my PR which is not too terrible given the course and my shortage of recent miles. On track I think.

Shortly after this I came down with the ‘flu, spending some groggy days around the house. and in bed. I was cheered by a timely arrival from Napa. So now “Get marathon plaque” can be crossed off the to-do list.

This is the first time I’ve run the Napa marathon, although I’ve heard good things about it and had it on the list. I’ve had a persistent cold lately and was not feeling very fast, so had trouble deciding on a goal pace for the race. A PR seemed unlikely, but I noticed that a 3:20-ish finish would have been good enough to place in my age group in some previous years. I decided to head out at 7:40 pace (3:20 finish time) and see what developed. I was in an experimental mode, and trying several new things in this marathon. I have had trouble eating gels while running and usually only manage two or three of them. This time I had four diluted gels in a small flask which was much easier and did not make my fingers sticky. This worked really well, and now I can experiment with different mixes.
Experiment number 2 was the Garmin. I’m reluctant to use it in races because it’s a lot more to think about than a simple split timer. I used it this time because I really wanted to record my heartrate for future trining purposes, and to see if the “average pace” display would be a reasonable no-brains way to keep track of pace.

We had dinner the evening before with some of my online buddies. James, who has been running for just two years, was shooting for his first sub-3:00, and Amy was also gunning for a PR in the low 3:0x area. Carrie, who was looking for an improvement on her 3:10 at CIM, had gone and injured herself in the last week playing a computer dance game and seemed a likely DNF. She planned to start anyway in case of a miracle recovery.

James, Amy, Carrie, Me (Lit by someone else's flash)

The buses deposited us on the Silverado Trail – despite the name it is a road – at the edge of Calistoga while it was still dark. Two rows in front of me on the bus were two older guys, one of whom had been talking nonstop the whole trip. I found this a little wearing and filtered it out, but I gathered that this guy had run a whole lot of races. I was glad to get out into the gentle rain. The temperature was comfortable. The drop bags – choice of duffle or backpack, were the best I’ve received from any race. My bus was one of the early ones so I got to the porta-potties while the lines were just forming, so no problems there. Some later arrivals had to get creative in this department, the announcer even suggested the oak tree! There was a vineyard nearby, but at this time of year the vines were bare and provided no cover. A few trees and bushes saw good service I think. It was light by the time we started at seven.

With no pace groups, start corrals or pace guide markers at Napa, lining up is somewhat chancy. I probably put myself too far back, since I had to pass quite a few runners in the first half mile. After a bit of weaving, I found the edge of the road had fewer runners and was easier to navigate. Unusually for a rural road, the Silverado Trail has bike lanes and is thus quite wide. We had the whole width to play with, and it seemed that many runners stayed clear of the bike lanes because of the camber.
Mile 1 is slightly downhill and was slightly fast despite the manoeuvring. We were mostly sorted out by then and I eased up slightly. I heard a familiar droning voice, and the two guys from the bus came past me at a good clip. I was impressed, they appeared to be in their 60s. I hoped they were, anyway. I was already looking out for people who might in my age group. One such was playing cat and mouse with me already. He was studiously avoiding the bike lanes, even crossing over to the outside of the curves on the uphills to reduce the gradient. He passed me on each uphill, but so did everybody. My uphill running was just terrible, which just shows how quickly you can lose something if you don’t keep at it. I was trotting past him on the downhills though. that’s more of a skill than a muscle-strength thing, and I still had that going for me. Miles 2-3 were slower thanks to the hills, then I got back on track with in the next two miles.
This became the pattern for most of the first half. It rained harder for a while which caused me some concern about my choice of shoes. My Brooks Green Silence, new for this race, are lightweight shoes with a lower heel than most, and a novel tongue-less lacing arrangement. These features were just fine, but there’s a very shallow tread pattern which made for some splashing. The roomy toe box had some water squishing around inside too. For a while I was running with the same set of people.
Around mile 12 a tall young guy in a red shirt came by. It had stopped raining, but there was a noticeable headwind. I tucked in behind him and drafted for about two miles. He betrayed no awareness of my presence – my feet were now quietly dry – but I let him go around mile 13. This burst of speed pulled me away from anti-tangent guy and the others I had been running with, and I never saw any of them again. This was good because my speed had been lagging somewhat.

An unusual feature of this race is that you can have your own bottles placed on a table at aid stations that you designate. I did not use this but I did glance at the bottle tables. The secret seems to be to have a short stumpy bottle, because those get placed at the front. Some aid stations only had a half-dozen bottles while others had thirty or more, so it helps to pick non-obvious aid stations for your pickups. It generally seemed workable though. I did just fine with the cups, and the volunteers were really good, often jogging a few steps to ease the transfer.

Now that we were into the second half, it was time to push a little, and I started picking off occasional runners. Red shirt passed me again – huh? pit stop? He was going quite fast after his little breather so I did not follow this time. I was passing some other runners though. As the miles advanced I started to push harder. My splits show that I did not really speed up, but it sure seemed like it. I was overhauling runners whom I had not seen since mile 1, including a couple of age-group likelys. Hey, I was even catching Red-shirt! He walked though an aid station and was gone.

There is a very gradual uphill from mile 19 to just past mile 20, and without many runners around I just had to work it myself. At the crest there was a view of the coming downhill and of nearly three miles of road ahead. Hm, cluster of runners a short way ahead, looks like at least two older guys in it, then dribs and drabs, another cluster about a mile away. dont think I’ll be catching them… I set to work catching the group ahead. Any guys with grey in their hair must die! That’s two disposed of, I can see two more, work, work… The other people that got passed were just collateral damage. I was enjoying this. In no time at all we were at mile 23 where the course abruptly left the Silverado Trail and went on a winding gentle uphill. I had been warned that this section really takes the wind out of peoples sails, so I pushed hard. There’s a walker, being passed by a couple of older guys. One of them is taking about something. Hey, it’s those guys from the bus, and they really flew away from me at the start! “Looking strong” I said going by, “Nice work” came the response.
Another straight road with trees either side, more runners, and a couple of walkers, to pass, and here were a knot of supporters. They started whooping at this solitary runner, and I felt like quite a star. With limited road access to the course, we saw these clusters of spectators every few miles. Some looked familiar, since they had been moving from pace to place. One woman was holding a large sign: “NICE LEGS”, and shouting “Marathon runners are sexy!”. On spotting her again, I pointed at my thigh and gave a thumbs up. “Yeaaah, that’s what I mean!” she cried.

Another straight, another corner and we transitioned from rural to suburban streets in the last mile. I overhauled two more runners, then heard footsteps behind. Was one of them coming back? No, it was a twenty-something guy, the first person to pass me in about 14 miles. I was miffed. More corners. Where the heck is the finish? Vintage High school came in to view, and we crossed the road towards it. Time to start kicking. I was plainly not the only one with that thought, as another young guy came flying by. Where did he come from? I managed a sub-7:00 spurt in the last quarter mile, but there was no catching him. At the finish, the volunteers kindly enquired if I was feeling all right, hung a medal on me, and pointed me towards the refreshments.

James got his sub-3 (by 6 seconds), Amy got a big PR at 3:04, and Carrie called it a day after just a quarter mile. No miracle recovery for her. Me? 3:26:06, 3rd in my age group. Nearly 10 minutes slower than CIM just three months prior. I had abandoned the dictates of the timepiece and paced most of the race by feel, arriving at the halfway point in 1:41:16 or so. This would have set me up for a negative-split 3:20 but I was just not that fast. The ingredients are equal parts: Poor health, compromised training, the weather, and the self-fulfilling knowing-I-was-slow bugaboo. Throw in a minute or two for the course, which is a little slower than CIM. Never mind, I still really enjoyed this race.

Coming up: Two weeks rest, and a short-race-appropriate training program, then some shorter races.

The wind buffeted the car a little as I drove across the Bay Bridge at 6 a.m. Oh dear, it’s going to be challenging down by the beach. And I have a headache. Oh well, no PR for me today I think. I’ll just have to squeeze some fun out of it somehow.

This race is a point-to-point with buses to take us from the Ocean Beach parking lots to the start area at the other end of Golden Gate Park. A party of LMJS ladies was just two cars over, so we rode together  As we jogged from the bus to the bib pickup, somebody quipped “Now I can tell my friends that I went running with Jim the other day!” We all laughed. That cheered me up quite a bit. It’s hard to beat yourself up over your times when people say things like that.

I kept bumping into people I knew in the start area, including Dave, an online buddy and fellow Brit I have not seen in months.  The sun came up, the sky was clear, and even the wind seemed to have moderated. There appeared to be pace leaders this year, but nothing faster than 1:40. Perhaps they were unofficial. The half and 5k start together with a course split after about half a mile. I lined up a little behind the 7:00 minutes/mile pace marker, promising myself to just go with the flow for the first mile, then see how things develop. The cable car bell rang for the start and off we went. The pack was not fully up to speed by the line so it looked like the first mile would be sightly slow. Of course there was a walker ahead of me to get around. She seemed blissfully unaware of the runners bumping into one another as they darted around her. At least there was not a line of them.

We went along North side of the Panhandle with good space to run after the initial crowding. most people seemed to have lined up correctly. There were one or two young guys coming past from behind. I wondered how many of them I would be seeing later. Quite a few, it turned put We turned and reached the first mile marker. 7:17. Slow but not surprising.  I dropped the pace a tiny bit. Let’s see what we can do while sheltered from most of the wind. Here comes the second mile near Kezar stadium. 7:02. That’s more what I had in mind. One of these days it might be nice to run one of these things at sub-7 pace but that would not be today.

Another slow one – 7:23. Well that was up hill. Was that Joann in front of me? Hard to tell from the back. Nah, probably not. I passed, and was concentrating on who to pass next when a voice behind said: “Hi Jim!”. Joann is one of the fastest members of our current marathon  training group. She trained for the Oakland Marathon last year but had an achilles problem. Now she’s taking a second crack at it.

We ran the tangents on the curvy road passing back and forth through the other runners, most of whom seemed happy just to follow the road, adding extra yards to their run. Joann seemed reasonably comfortable, despite having had to speed up a little to stay with me. After comparing goals – neither of us really had a fixed time goal – we hardly spoke.  I listened to her breathing to get an idea of her stress level. OK, this would work. If I was  going to pace conservatively, It might as well be Joann’s pace.

Although we were gradually passing most of the others around us, the splits show us holding our own on the variable terrain. 7:15, 7:00, 7:20, 7:09. That last was mile 7 where we turned onto the Great Highway that runs parallel to the beach. I was pleasantly surprised that the wind was bowing much less that it had been earlier. “How are you doing?”. “Uh, OK. It seems to have got hotter all of a sudden”. “We’re running downwind. It will get cooler after the turnaround.” The prospect of running into a headwind seemed pleasant. We were cooking here.  I wiped sweat from my eyes. The turnaround was still more than two miles away. The heat gradually slowed us: 7:19, 7:30, 7:36.

Heading north again, it was much more comfortable, even though we now had to push against the wind coming diagonally off the ocean. 7:25, 7:37, (more wind here) 7:27. Joann was sensibly running behind me now, t i could see her shadow. After one of the aid stations, it was not there. I looked around. She was 10 yards back. I eased a tiny it and she caught up surprisingly quickly. I started to push a little, knowing we had only a mile to go. We were passing quite a few people now. Christine of the LMJS racing team was up ahead, and getting slowly nearer. as I drew level she retorted. “I knew you would catch me Jim”. I suppose she had spotted me at the turnaround. My yellow Brooks ID  singlet is pretty conspicuous. Oh, no shadow again, quick glance around. Still close,  good.  We turned back into the park for the final uphill to the finish. A couple of young guys came by as their buddy behind cried  “Arrgh, my nemesis!” I chased them up the hill going as fast as I could. Joann could manage this last part on her own. In the finish chute I turned around. She was  just a few seconds back,  having not had the reserves to charge the hill like I had. We high-fived.

1:36:07. 8th in my age group. Nowhere near a PR but not too shabby in that field, and not all out.. Christine won her age group, which probably compensated for my passing her!

As an indicator of fitness this did not work out. I felt somewhat under the weather because of a lingering cold, and did not race it all out. The course would have not yielded up a PR anyway. Now to set my sights on Napa on four weeks. (less than that now)

After doing the requisite zigzagging, I attached myself to the tail of a loose lead pack of 5k and 10K runners. Going too fast? Probably. Mile 1 -  6:42 Hold this for the race? I wish! Slow a little. I kept a constant distance to the two guys in front. Mile 2 – 7:11 Oh, too slow. Just then a young woman came past. I accelerated a little and followed her as she passed the guys I had been pacing on. Yes, this is sustainable I think. I wonder which distance she is running? Mile 3 – 7:11 again. Those guys must have been slowing.

I ran the tangents well towards the end of the lap and was briefly in front of my new pace partner. White bib, she’s running the 10K, easily leading the women’s race. I grabbed a cup of water from the table as we finished the lap. There was a handful of guys in the 5K finish chute watching us go by. Hm, that has to be most of the people who were in front of us. It’s going to be a lonely second lap.

And so it was. No one visible in front, I glimpsed someone behind, but next time I checked he was further away. Then he was gone. Zeta, for that was her name, kept a steady pace, and it dawned on me that my division position was now immutable and I might as well try to beat her. I had let her get about 40 yards in front, so proceeded to close that gap. Once I had done so, I had to make a decision. Should I continue the surge and go on past, hoping she does not catch me at the finish? Or should I stay close behind and try to out-kick her? I decided on the latter, which in retrospect was probably an error. Miles 4 and 5 -  6:57, 7:02.

Zeta dealt with me expertly. As we went up a slight incline in the last quarter mile she strengthened her pace a little so I was getting extended just to keep up. My kick was getting burned away. Mile 6 – 7:05. When she kicked I did not have an adequate response, and she beat me over the line by 2 seconds. My chip time was 43:50, which knocked a minute off my 10K PR. Nice, although I probably still have some work to do there. I won the 50-59 age group by a pretty good margin.