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For the second year in a row, I went down to Long Branch NJ for the New Jersey Marathon. Last year, I ran the full marathon as my second marathon. This year I participated in the marathon relay with some friends from the Cool Running website. These are some of the same people that I met in New Haven last September and/or in Philly in November.
We all met up on Sat Apr 28, the day before the race, for a pasta dinner. Shown in the first picture, standing
left to right: Maria, Lori, me, Alexis, Heather, Dave, Lora, and Tim. Seated: Larry and Trevor.
The marathon relay consisted of 4 legs, of 5, 8, 5 and 8 miles. The relay team was, in order, Lori, me, Alexis
and Larry. Maria, Heather and Tim were running the Half Marathon. Dave and Lora were running there first full
marathons. And Trevor was aiming to run a qualifying time for the Boston Marathon (3:15).
Since I was using this race as a tuneup for the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati next weekend, I didn't want to go quite all out for this run. But I did feel as though I could maintain a quick pace
(for me) for 8 miles without taxing myself too much.
I ran my leg of the relay at exactly an 8:00 pace, according to my Garmin. I felt very good, so I am quite pleased
with the time. Everybody on our relay team ran very well, and our composite time was 3:38:07, which placed us 7th out of 61 relay teams, and 3rd out of 38 in our division! (Mixed, non-Masters). I am thrilled
with a finish like that!
The rest of our group ran great races as well. Dave and Lora successfully completed their first marathons.
Heather completed her first half, Tim ran his first one in a couple years, and Maria set a new PR. And Trevor did qualify
for Boston, with a couple minutes to spare.
So once again I had a great time running with the Cool Running 30somethings crowd. And I look forward to doing
it again next week in Cincinnati.
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