Asbury Park Relay Marathon
Yesterday I had the honor of joining my sister Michele and four other women to form Will Run 4 Chocolate, our Asbury Park Relay Marathon team. (She picked the name.) We ran 26.2 miles over eight laps through the Asbury streets and on the Boardwalk, switching team members under the unheated cover of Asbury’s Convention Hall.
The weather was horrific — cold windy rain early, followed by colder, windier conditions by midday. I was asked to run laps 2 and 3, covering 6.7 miles total. Michele ran Lap 1 and passed over to me. I ran with my brother-in-law Paul for the first quarter mile or so as he was doing the full marathon at a slow pace as a “team of one”, really just training for the Philly Marathon in November, but then I took off (as much as I ever really “take off” while running) to go at my own pace. On the plus side it was flat as a pancake, and better to run in the cold than in the heat. My times were not terrible, running 9 minute miles. Thank goodness I brought a dry change of clothes, as after that it was three hours of cheering on my teammates and other random runners. One of our teammates got cramps early on, but we had a couple of 8-minute mile runners to finish up and help the overall team results. In total we ran 4:04, which was 16th out of 31 co-ed teams and thus thoroughly, completely average. We did collect a very cool Tillie medal at the end - my first running medal! Paul finished up in about 4:25 — not fast, but again, really a training run for Philly, where he is hoping for sub-4:00.
No races planned between now and the end of the year. I’m done with NYRR qualifying races (hooray!), and thus officially “in” for NYCM2010, but may try to pick up one or two more for fun.
2 years ago