I broke the treadmill. Then the next treadmill broke too.
This was apparently how the taper for the California International Marathon was going to work.
The training before that had been pretty solid. I ran 23.2 miles three weeks out and did not feel tired until somewhere past 20. A few days later I ran three miles around 6:25 pace, seven 800s between 2:53 and 2:57, then another three miles at 6:12 pace. I wrote one word in the training sheet after that: “Woof.”
The last big workout was less clean. I ran the first six-mile race-pace section under 6:15 pace. The second one got heavy. My foot and hip felt nasty, my form got bad, and I stopped the workout at 20 miles.
That run changed the race plan. Instead of forcing the fast end of the goal from the gun, I would start around 6:25 to 6:30 pace and work down if the body was there.
Then came the taper comedy. Thanksgiving was 4.5 miles because I broke a treadmill. The next day had hills and ice. The day after that was four miles because, as I wrote in the sheet, “again... the treadmill broke.”
Four days before the race I ran two goal-pace miles at 6:19. The legs were still working.
The night before CIM, I made a pace band out of a thin strip of paper. The top said 6:22 and 2:47:30. Below that I wrote every mile, the planned split, and the running total. Nothing fancy. Just enough arithmetic to keep me honest when marathon brain arrived.
I finished in 2:47:55, twenty-five seconds off the number at the top of the band. The average was 6:23 per mile and the pacing stayed remarkably even.
My note in the sheet afterward was also simple: “really evenly paced, super happy with this outcome.”