The CIM course

Off Folsom-Auburn Road in the dark and onto Oak Avenue Parkway, where the road falls away harder than anywhere else all day. Cold legs, a bus-stop warmup and the steepest drop on the course is how a good race gets spent before sunrise.

Oak Avenue Parkway feeds into Oak Avenue and the ground quietly stops helping. This is the first of the small risers that define the whole course, and the correct response is to leave the effort exactly where it was.

Straight down Oak Avenue with the road tipping forward again. Let it come to you instead of reaching for it, because give and take is the pattern for the next two hours and chasing every descent is what wrecks the second half.

More Oak Avenue, more of the road falling away, and by now the light is up. Effort should still feel too easy.

The grade flattens on Oak Avenue and the field settles into its groups. Good mile to take stock of your pace without adjusting it.

Oak Avenue hands off to Fair Oaks Boulevard, the road you will be on for most of the rest of the day. Level ground here makes it a clean place to sort out fuel and fluids.

Fair Oaks Boulevard tips downhill again through the suburbs. Nothing to do but hold the rhythm you already have.

Here the road turns against you for the first time in a while. It is a small rise and it will still register, so shorten the stride, keep the breathing where it was and let the pace go.

Fair Oaks Boulevard keeps rising gently as the course rolls toward Fair Oaks Village. Two uphill miles back to back is this race reminding you that net downhill is an average, not a promise.

Fair Oaks Boulevard bends onto Old Winding Way and the course gives back what the last two miles took. Take it, but take it easy.

Howard Street and Old Winding Way deliver the biggest descent since the opening miles. Enjoy it and stay honest, because the sharpest climb of the day is waiting on the other side.

Just past eleven the road stands up: a short honest pitch at better than one and a half percent before it hands the height straight back. Run it by effort rather than pace and let the far side reset your legs.

Fair Oaks Boulevard settles into a gentle forward tilt again. Half the race is nearly gone and the course has already shown you everything it does.

Halfway arrives on Fair Oaks Boulevard, downhill and unceremonious. Read your split honestly: if it is quicker than you planned, the rollers ahead will collect the difference.

A flat, wide stretch of Fair Oaks Boulevard. Nothing changes here, which is the point, because this race gets decided by what you do not do.

Level road again, the same boulevard, the same long sightlines. Fuel now while it is cheap, because the stretch after this is where the day starts to cost something.

The road tips down once more on Fair Oaks Boulevard. Twenty-mile territory is close, so run this one relaxed and keep the quads out of it.

More downhill, and the pounding is cumulative now. If your quads have started talking, shorten the stride slightly and quicken the turnover instead of braking against the grade.

Fair Oaks Boulevard eases off and the race becomes a race. The little bumps that felt like nothing back at mile 8 stop feeling like nothing.

Twenty on Fair Oaks Boulevard with the road still leaning your way. Whatever pace you have been holding, this is the mile that tells you whether you earned it.

Flat and grinding along the boulevard. Pick a runner ahead and reel them in slowly, one at a time, because the terrain is done doing you favours.

A steel truss bridge over the American River carries you off Fair Oaks Boulevard and into the city on J Street. The change underfoot and the change of scenery land at exactly the mile you are least ready for either.

J Street runs straight and tree lined through East Sacramento, dead level. No terrain left to lean on, so this one comes down to rhythm and stubbornness.

Still J Street, still flat, still ticking off numbered cross streets one after another. Counting them down is as good a strategy as anything else you have left.

J Street gives way to Alhambra Boulevard and then a turn onto L Street, the first real change of direction in miles. Turns cost rhythm this late, so take them wide and get straightened out fast.

L Street to 8th Street to Capitol Mall, flat, with the Capitol dome sitting right in front of you. Everything you have been saving since Folsom-Auburn Road gets spent on these last blocks.