2024 California International Marathon

My (not-so-brief) history with CIM

I had unfinished business at CIM (California International Marathon) – there’s no doubt about it. I had raced it three times previously (2019, 2021 and 2022) and my expectations were always high – CIM was going to be my fast-girl marathon. Little did I know that it would take me almost five years to get there.

The first time I ran it in 2019 I wanted to run a “fast time” which I think I believed to be in the 3:05-3:10 range. I had finally run 3:30 in 2017, qualified for Boston and next wanted to absolutely blow my PR out of the water. I didn’t exactly plan for success, I ran a 50 mile trail race three weeks before, didn’t practice any marathon pacing work during my training and simply just thought I was fast enough to run a stellar time without trying all that hard (I think I had run a 1:25 half a few months before and thus, thought I was hot shit). Spoiler alert – I finished in 3:21, fading hard in the second half and feeling rather unsatisfied (despite that being a 9 minute PR at the time).

My next attempt was unplanned – after blowing up at Boston in October 2021 and feeling absolutely devastated (despite, once again, managing another 7 minute PR with a 3:14), I signed up the following day for CIM which was 6 weeks later. By this time, I had specifically set my sights on sub three and anything less would result in at least some disappointment. From the get go, I was behind on pace, but I still managed to run 3:09 (another 5 minute PR), with a fairly well-executed pacing strategy. I was proud but unsettled and left feeling like I still had a lot to prove – I wanted people to think I was really fast, and to me, that meant running a marathon time that started with a 2.

I signed up for my third CIM in 2022 absolutely convinced I could finally crack sub three and finish the race feeling strong. I followed a new training program that challenged me like I had never been challenged before, thanks to coach Andy! Training started off amazingly, however, as I got closer and closer to race day, things took a nose dive. I was burnt out from too many races earlier that year without a break, extremely stressed and overwhelmed with my job at the time, my sleep suffered, my confidence plummeted and I was ten pounds up in weight. All of these issues compounded themselves and I very much did not believe I could run under three hours. I dreaded workouts and long runs and I failed to hit paces often. Come race day, I decided I should set out closer to 3:05-3:10 pace, which I felt poised to be able to maintain, yet still – the effort felt harder than I thought it should and by the halfway point – I had all but given up. My quads blew up which only frustrated me more – if I was running slower than the paces I trained for, shouldn’t my legs at least be able to handle that? I crossed the line in 3:23 feeling embarrassed that the course had kicked my ass for a third time and seriously wondering if this was something I could succeed at.

When I signed up for my fourth round of CIM back in April of this year (again, a day after absolutely imploding during the Boston Marathon, there is definitely a pattern here), I wasn’t sure what my motivation would be. I wanted another shot on the calendar to break three hours and my fiance Andrei was also seeking redemption, so we signed up together. Just two weeks after signing up for CIM, I ran the Toronto Marathon in May where I ended up finally breaking 3 and no longer “needed” CIM as a fallback option. I was still looking forward to running it, and it helped that we had convinced a huge crew of friends to sign up as well.

Training, Goals & motivation

16 weeks prior to CIM when we officially kicked off our training block, I didn’t really have a goal – I had already achieved that marathon time starting with a 2 and I didn’t feel like I had anything else to prove. I genuinely felt that if I never ran a faster marathon time again, I would be happy with what I had already done, so I could just train for fun! But marathon training for fun isn’t a thing. I quickly realized that if I was going to put in the training, and I wanted to, that I needed a goal – I just wasn’t motivated enough to get up early on a weekend to do a long run for a race I wasn’t invested in, or “for fun”. And so I set my sights on sub 2:55. This felt both manageable yet challenging. I had already trained at 4:10/km pace, my new goal would just need me to pare down to 4:07-4:08/km and BOOM – I’d knock two minutes off and be able to brag about being a low-2:50’s runner. I still felt challenged by such an incremental goal because I knew how hard I had had to work to break 3hrs for the first time, and I knew that even repeating that performance would be something to be really proud of. Because I’ve learned that things don’t always go to plan and I had ended up with race day outcomes I hadn’t anticipated too many times to count, I ended up coming up with Goals A to F, as follows:

A Goal: 2:54:xx (or faster)
B Goal: PR (sub 2:56:54)
C Goal: Sub 3
D Goal: CIM Course PR (sub 3:09)
E Goal: Don’t get caught by Heather (I was 0/2 on achieving this goal of the years we had both raced together)
F Goal: Get caught by Heather (because if you’ve missed goals A-E, you probably want a friend there to pull you into the finish)

My training felt so different this time around, because I had the confidence to back it up. I knew that if I could train at 4:10/km, I was physically capable of 4:07/km – I truly knew that this time, I just had to do it and maintain the mental composure I had already developed and demonstrated. That took so much of the pressure off and made pushing my limits fun, motivating and exciting. There were a few bad workouts, but I hit paces 90% of the time and felt confident that I was considerably fitter than the spring.

Coaching Bae

Andrei and I trained together side by side, and by side by side, I mean that I tried as hard as I could to keep him in sight. Andrei had gotten WAY faster than the last time we trained for the same race and while I had too – he was outpacing me by a literal mile! I was truly more nervous, invested and consumed with Andrei’s training than my own, as he had been waiting for his shot at redemption in the marathon since May 2023 when he ran 3:00:37 at the Vancouver Marathon. Andrei had had bad luck with injuries almost every marathon training block in 2022, 2023 and had suffered from achilles issues that prevented him from making it to the start line earlier this year for his goal marathon. He has worked hard, become SO much faster and demonstrated so much patience when things didn’t go to plan that I just wanted him to make it to the start line healthy. It was hard (but amazing) coaching my partner through training and toeing the line of fiancee and coach. His goal time became more aggressive and I tried to balance encouragement to go for it while also erring on the side of caution – I was so afraid he would push too hard and flare up his achilles or an angry hamstring that appeared halfway through the training block. I watched him nail workouts at his goal pace and was amazed with how fast he had become, I knew he’d have a great day if he could make it to the start line.

To minimize risk of injury, the first eight weeks of the training block had Andrei only running 4 times per week and swapping out easy runs for cycling, keeping weekly running mileage in the 50-60km/week range. After an overzealous (and unapproved, by me) strength workout before intervals resulted in a minor hamstring strain, we had to back off for a week or two before four weeks at peak mileage from 65-90km. I mention this because that’s definitely on the lighter end of typical volume many people train at to run the time Andrei ended up running. His training was a great example of balancing risk vs reward, showing that not everyone needs to do back to back 100km+ weeks to run fast.

It was so fun to share our training together, repeating some old classic workouts that I had found really valuable from previous marathon builds. I kept a few classics from Coach Andy Reed and Jacob Puzey, I was nailing the workouts that I had dreaded and feared from just two years ago. I also added in some of my own creations, as I had built some workouts for athletes I coach and I finally got to try them out myself, learning that one in particular was a bit of a doozy (IYKYK). I headed down to Sacramento excited, confident, stuffed to the brim with carbs and ready to put myself out there again.

Race Day

Race day was harder than I thought. Once the gun went off and we were on our way, I felt an unexpected pressure and panic set in – could I repeat the strong race that I had executed back in May, or was I a one-and-done marathon performer? Had I prepared my quads for the rolling hills and significant downhills that CIM inflicts upon its runners? I felt fit, but I was worried about my quads blowing up. I was nervous about the first half which, on paper, looks easy, yet I’ve always found it challenging to maintain slower-than-marathon pace on this section. We had watched the course preview which offers some pretty specific advice on running just slower than/just faster than marathon pace for specific portions of the course. I had decided I would try this, while running as close to marathon pace as possible – I had learned that I needed to commit to my goal and go for it from the get go. Every other time I had run CIM, I had started out slow, the pace still felt like shit and I would quickly bleed out all hope that I could make it up in the second half – I didn’t want that to be my story yet again.

A Moment for the Incredible Woman That is Alex Augsten

Alex is without a doubt my biggest inspiration when it comes to road running and the one that made me believe I could chase the goal of the sub three hour marathon in the first place, as this was a goal near and dear to her heart. She’s been fit enough to do it for years, running several half marathons in the 1:20, 1:21, 1:22 range and executing workouts that BLOW MY MIND. Her last attempt had gone sideways and left her with a marathon time that far from celebrated the fitness she had, and she, like Andrei, was owed some redemption. When she signed up for CIM with her husband Karl just 6 weeks before race day, I was thrilled and immediately started daydreaming about us all celebrating in the finish line beer garden, cheers’ing to all having finally smashed that 3 hour barrier. The marathon workouts she was able to execute with the short time she had leading up to race day were mind-blowing and I knew in my heart that she could blow 3 hours out of the water. Still recoiling from her last marathon experience, Alex didn’t seem so sure when we spoke about it in the weeks leading up to race day and went into race day with a conservative goal of setting out at ~3hr pace and hoping for the best.

Okay, Back to the Race

Alex made a last minute decision to run with me and set out at 2:55 pace and convinced us (she, Andrei and I) to jump into the sub 2:50 corral, which I agreed to, as long as we could go at the very BACK. We set out together, following the course preview advice to a tee. Run the first 5km just slower than marathon pace, despite how much downhill there is. Check. Run km 5-10 just faster than marathon pace – check. Watch out for km 10-15, the hardest part of the course with a net uphill – definitely slightly slower than MP. Check. I was hitting the paces and splits almost perfectly for 2:55, but I still felt a sense of panic and unexpected doubt. The effort felt scary, I felt nervous I wasn’t going to be able to hold the pace and my quads started to ache from the downhills by about 10km in – no bueno. I voiced my concerns aloud a few times and Alex always kept me calm, I was also trying not to be negative and impact her immaculate vibes, but I felt….oddly pessimistic about the day. I even thought about just…..stopping at 10km – citing “just not being into it today” as an acceptable excuse. That was a really weird experience, because truthfully – everything was perfectly fine, I just couldn’t find the trust in myself and assumed things would only get worse. I called upon the advice Andy had sent our group before the race – “the marathon is long enough that you can always come back from a bad patch” and so I just tried to hang on and hope that I would start to feel better, not worse.

Alex floated away around 16km as I knew she would at some point. I was so happy to share the first 15km with her, she is such an incredible athlete, one of my best friends in this world and our friendship is one that for whatever reason, has always been immune to the competitive dynamic that flares up sometimes between gals. At first, when she floated ahead I figured I must have been starting to slow down but in fact, I had actually sped up – it just turns out that she had too (another spoiler alert, she never stopped speeding up, all the way to a 2:50 finish).

I felt a certain amount of relief in being on my own in that I had noone to answer to if I slowed down. Oddly enough, my mood started to shift, probably supported by the tylenol I had taken as a last-ditch effort to try to salvage my quads. As I approached the halfway point, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and my paces to falter, but they didn’t. I came through the half at 1:27:35, just about on track for sub 2:55 and about 6 minutes faster than my fastest split on the course. But I knew the second half of this race is where you find out how your day is really going.

I braced myself for the quad cramping which always appeared around 25km but it did not come for me. My quads were sore, but they were still functional, and I was remaining on pace, in fact I was actually speeding up and doing so comfortably. Soon, I was counting down to 28km, which I knew would mean less than an hour of running left if I kept on pace. The thoughts of backing off or quitting faded with every km I ran, and I soon found myself feeling strong, confident and realizing that I had turned my frown upside down. The further I got into the race, the lower the risk was that something would go wrong. I hit a rough patch for a few km around 30km with some stomach issues and started to feel it was a struggle to stay under 4:15/km pace – I told myself that sub 2:55 was off the table, but a new PR was still within reach. Breaking 3 for a second time was highly likely unless I completely gave up, and this motivated me – both my B and C goals were mine to lose sight of. My stomach was getting worse and worse, I felt like I was running with a bowling ball shoved in the front of my shorts; I started to wonder if going to the bathroom or not was going to be considered optional for much longer, but I really didn’t want to stop at a porta pottie for fear I would use it as an excuse to give up. I ended up ducking into the bathroom at 34km, losing just over a minute despite making as quick work as possible, and getting the heck back out there.

As soon as I started running again, I felt light and bouncy and was surprised to find that I was back below marathon pace, and getting faster. With a PR still in reach, I wondered, if I gave it all I had, if I could make back up the time I had lost to sneak in under 2:55. I knew I would be so pissed off if I looked back and had left anything on the table. The last 8km were all below marathon pace and I careened forward past countless runners who were in the pain cave, some of them walking and/or gripping a glute or hamstring as they hobbled. I don’t wish that on anyone, I’ve been there three times before at this race, but I was thrilled that on this day, that wasn’t my story. My quads have never burned so badly for so long, but it was exhilarating to be able to hang on and I felt like I gained more resolve with every step I took. I smiled every step of that last 8km.

In the end, I couldn’t break that 2:55 barrier, but I crossed that finish line so, so happy in 2:55:41. My last 8km averaged 4:02/km with a few km splits at 3:56. If you had told me that I would be able to run 12 seconds/km under my goal pace at the end of marathon, I would not have believed you and this is a huge takeaway for me – the curiosity has been sparked to run even faster next time. While I didn’t get the 2:54:xx time that had been my A goal, I proved to myself that I can hold 4:07-4:08/km for 42.2km and that I really have learned how to execute a marathon well – something that took literally decades to master.

In the finish chute I reunited with Andrei and Alex who had both had the incredible days they had worked so hard for and my finish line fantasy came to life, celebrating Andrei’s 2:48 and Alex’s 2:50 in the beer garden sunshine while we waited for the rest of our friends to come in and get to continue the party into the evening.

Now What?

Anyone who’s run a marathon knows that its so easy to rewrite history in the days after the finish line. I am so, so proud but I can also be honest and say that a few days removed, I feel slightly disappointed. I have this nagging in the back of my head that I didn’t get that A goal time I wanted and my ego is left with something to prove. Isn’t it crazy how quickly we move the goalposts on ourselves? If, at the start of this year, you told me I would run under 3 hours twice and run 2:55:XX – I would have been over the moon, but today I feel a faint, but present, teensy tiny inkling of failure.

What I don’t feel this time, is defeat. I see growth in many ways that aren’t captured by the finish time alone. I learned that I can navigate a negative mindset early on and turn it around to have a successful day. I learned that I can run my fastest splits of the race at the end – I would never have thought I would be capable of that going into the race. I believe, through the success of several inspiring women in my life that also ran CIM, that PR’s are very much possible in our 40’s and 50’s, and I’m excited to keep moving those goalposts and redefining what a fast-girl time means to me. For now, though, it’s time to enjoy where I’m at and step away from the marathon for a bit in the pursuit of some other adventures.

Special Shoutout to a few of my favourite people that I didn’t mention above:

Karl Augsten ran 2:22:38 – a PR and the top Canadian, I believe

Heather MacPherson ran a 3:15 – a massive PR at 49

Ailsa MacDonald ran a 2:43 – another PR at 44

Martine Grenon-Lafontaine ran 3:51:36 – ~8min PR and getting closer to that BQ!

Liza Pye ran sub 3:30 in her FIRST marathon and negative split by one second – how’s that for professional pacing?

Barry Green ran 4:06 – a PR and word on the street is he already wants to run another one…..

Saira Reed ran 3:27 after not feeling like it was her day. She ran such a fast time in 2022 that it made it pretty dang tough to PR, but I know she still has a PR in her when the time is right