The red digits on the hotel clock are showing 5:22 AM.
My alarm will be going off in about eight minutes. I consider getting up and walking across the room to my phone, but why waste the time. Instead I lay on my back, keep my eyes closed, and meditate.
When my alarm does go off I am awake and alert. I swipe it off and immediately need to go to the bathroom. This is good.
I have been training my body to go early and the bowels have been moving almost as soon as I wake up most days. I’m sure I’ll need to go again before the race start, but the first trip this early is a good sign.
While in the bathroom I heard water running. But not water running through the pipes from adjacent rooms. This was water tapping on the roof.
Rain?
I looked out the window to see heavy drops splattering against the taught green pool cover and puddling in the concrete. I swiped my phone open and checked the weather app.
Rain Starting? It was supposed to be done by now.
I felt a little dejected. Not because of the chance that I would be running in the rain, but because I wanted to walk to the beach and watch the sunrise. I wanted to get a picture of the Wildwoods sign with the sun poking over the horizon behind it.
I turned away from the window, defeated. Made some coffee and oatmeal. Sat and sipped and ate.
The rain stopped.
I left the oatmeal on the table and walked a block and a half to the beach. The cloud cover was heavy so there was no seeing a sunrise. But this early in the morning, and weeks before the summer starts, there was no crowd by the Wildwoods sign and taking a picture was much easier.
I made it back to the room just in time for another poop before finishing breakfast and getting dressed for the race.
I’ve learned that any race shorter than a marathon needs a good warmup. With a half marathon I could get away with using the first mile as a warmup, but I wanted to go right out at a fast pace and see what I could do.
So I left the hotel room and jogged up to the race start, which was less than a quarter mile away, so I continued to jog up and down the boardwalk. Down the street some.And then back onto the boardwalk.
After a touch over two miles I stopped for a last minute pee, and was all ready to go with just a few minutes before the start.
Only a few thousand starters made for one mass start. I inched my way up to the 2 hour pacer. My main goal here was to run by feel and see how far under two hours I could get so staying with him for the first half might be a good pacing strategy, but as the starting field packed in I found myself a little further forward than he was.
I didn’t sweat it. If this guy ended up passing me in the race I could just latch onto him and try to hold on until the end.
But he never passed me.
The race starts at the convention center and we run down the length of the boardwalk toward North Wildwood. For that entire length I was behind a group of three people that seemed to be going a decent pace, so I stayed behind them.
I have never really consciously tried to draft in a foot race, but I knew that today was going to be the day to do it. And these three made for a good shield from the wind. I heard them mentioning that the 1:50 pacer was just ahead and they also said something about running 2 hours.
Sounded good to me so I tucked in and followed along.
The pace felt too easy. A lot of people were weaving through the runners and passing us. A voice in the back of my head told me that I wasn’t running fast enough, but I refused to look at my watch. Despite the pace feeling easy now I knew that it felt good for what was to come.
By the time we reached the end of the boardwalk the female of the group had left. I was still tucked behind the two men and they encouraged her to run her race and now worry about them. After she eased ahead one of the men commented to the other that she was going to have a fast day.
As we turned off the boardwalk the two men slowed down at a water stop. I wasn’t going to stop and wait for them so I continued on my own, but the wind hit me like a wall. I looked to my left and then my right and found what I needed.
Someone else to run behind.
I slowed so that a small group could pass and then moved in behind them. They knew I was there. I got looks from some of them. But I did not care. I got right in their wake and let them do the hard work.
After about three miles I still felt like I could go faster. So I did.
A lone runner came up along our right side and I eased out of the group and behind him. He was passing them and I was ready to start pushing the pace. I latched onto his shoulder and immediately felt the difference of running in a group versus running behind a single runner.
The wind gusts were still strong. He was blocking most of it, but my effort level started getting higher.
The effort level rose again as we left the island. The bridges at the shore points can get pretty steep. This one leading into Stone Harbor was not the steepest I had seen, but I could certainly feel the incline. I kept telling myself that once we got to the top we could coast down the other side.
Maybe there would also be a place to pee on the other side of this bridge. I started feeling the pressure, but it wasn’t an emergency pee. I could probably even hold it until the finish if I had to.
It was somewhere after this bridge that I took another assessment of my running. I had yet to look at my watch, so I wasn’t sure of the pace, but I felt like I was running a record pace. Something was telling me that today could be a new PR.
Despite that I still ignored my watch and ran as I felt I could run.
We enter Stone Harbor for only about a quarter mile before turning around and heading back to the start. This turn around is the best that I have seen in any race. It follows a small triangular intersection so you actually run a small circle that leads you back. Much better than making a hairpin turn around a single cone in the road.
I suspected there would be a clock at the turnaround and that was when I would allow myself to figure out the pace I was running. The clock read somewhere around 56 minutes as I passed it and I tried to do some running math in my head.
56 times two is 112.
Is 112 an hour and twelve minutes?
No way. I can’t run 1:12.
100 minutes is an hour forty. Plus twelve. An hour fifty two.
One hour and fifty two minutes? I am on pace to set a new record!
I resisted the urge to speed up and focused on holding the pace I was already running. I still ignored my watch and just kept pushing along.
The pressure in my bladder seemed to build even more now.
Should I stop to pee?
I saw a port-o-pottie on the way out and knew I would be coming up to it in a moment or two. Okay. If there is no one in it I will stop and pee.
No one there, and that pee felt so good.
It was at this point I decided to pull my earbuds from my pocket and turn on my music. I usually save the music for the last half of the run, but after seeing my pace I wasn’t going to slow down just for music.
But since I stopped anyway I could get the music going while I power walked away from the toilet.
I told Siri to start shuffling my running playlist and then I got back up to speed. I saw the two hour pacer heading to the turn around. He wasn’t too far behind me.
The roads back to North Wildwood seemed to be easier going this way. I drafted when I could, but everyone was so far spread out now that it was difficult to find someone going my same pace.
I did find two guys that were running together that did a good job blocking the wind. They seemed annoyed that I was there, but didn’t care enough to try to shake me. They were going to run their race and my presence wasn’t going to make them adjust in any way.
I followed this pair all the way back to the boardwalk, at times easing ahead of them and then falling back behind them. Maybe they were trying to get rid of me, but I was in no shape to run too much faster than they were going and they didn’t seem like they wanted to speed up at all.
The boardwalk seemed a lot longer this time around. With less than two miles to go I was reaching the end of my rope. I tried to hold on. I pushed as hard as I could. I didn’t even slow down when I saw my wife on the side cheering me on. I just kept pushing.
I thought that seeing the finishing arch in the distance would give me one final boost of speed. But it seemed so far away.
I felt like I was pushing harder than I had all race. I was really churning the best I could, but that final mile was the slowest mile of the entire race by about ten seconds. And it was my only mile slower than a 9:00 pace.
I finally did cross the finish line, but it was not a new personal record.
1:55:51
Two minutes and twenty eight seconds slower than my best time of 1:53:23
But I did break two hours, which was my main goal. And I did it by a significant margin.
A successful race.
The Bush League Runner 