A month remains until the 27th running of the California International Marathon, and in a week or two, most runners will start tapering. But there's still plenty of training left to go.
This afternoon, I drove the entire CIM course with ultra-running superstar Tim Twietmeyer, who has run all 26 CIMs and once again will serve as a pacer this year. (Twietmeyer, pictured with his son, will pace the 3:35 group.)
I handed Twietmeyer a tape recorder and he gave a mile-by-mile rundown on what to expect, each rise and dip in the road, wind speed and all sorts of strategy.
His rundown will appear in the print edition of The Bee closer to race day. But Twietmeyer did pass along this tip.
"A lot of the guys who are emailing me asking about the course and advice?" he says. "I tell them to make sure to run a lot of rolling hills on your long runs, even in the last month. The early part of the course has a lot of those, especially miles 7 to 9. You need to be able to deal with those early and get some time in the bank for later in the race."
Below is the CIM course, via the Map My Run Web tool. (See you at Sunday's Clarksburg run; I'll be doing the 20-miler at, I hope, mostly marathon pace.):
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