Woke up 5:30 am and after an hour Agnes and I were on our way to Jersey City. Got to the race site with 20 minutes to spare for registration and a short warm up! As we were entering the parking building we saw Lence, asked him to get my number to save time. We really should had left the house 30 minutes earlier, now I didn't had any time to fully prepare!
Meet up with Lence, put on my race bib number and champion chip. Tried to use a Porta-a-John but lines were too long, then we heard a staff event member shouting 3 minutes till start time! I didn't really felt like disposing any business yet, so I told Lence let's just go and run. Turn out to be a BIG mistake, more about it later.
Got to the starting line, gave Agnes a kiss and she took our usual pre-race photo.
My initial goal for this race was to break 2 hours which I have never done before. Lence was going to help me achieved this goal. However leading up to this race I got sick and weather conditions were not ideal. I told Lence let's just see how things go and how I feel but I will still try to break 2 hours today.
Mile 1 - was our warm up, we passed Rainer Dones and his wife! Congrats for toughing it out there!
Mile 2- pace picked up to 8:30min/mile, too early & too fast had to pull back to 9:10min/mile.
Mile 3- had to stop 5minutes @ a McDonalds and dispose my business, couldn't wait to get back to the finish line anymore. This is why getting to race site EARLY is really important, so that this kind of things don't happen. Told Lence just to conitnue and I will try to catch up with him later.
Mile 4 breaking 2 hours was going to be really tough now! paced picked up and was too fast 8:41min/mile. I saw a woman wearing a sign at her back "Seek Ye first the Kingdom of God" as I was passing her I shouted "Amen Sister" and she smiled back!
I ate one GU Roctane followed by water.
Mile5 I got lucky race marshals stopped the trains from crossing, but right after I passed the tracks they let the trains go by as a result some runners had to stop a for a minute or 2. That would have been more time lost for me, yikes!
Mile6 we were now inside Liberty State Park, lot's of puddles and mud run. Race clock read 1 hour and change, calculated I have to run less than an 1 hour for the next 7 miles to break 2 hours, it wasn't going to happen today so I changed my goal to finish less than 2:10
Mile 7 in the zone, after the pit stop @ mile 3 I was just passing a lot of runners and I wasn't being passed. This felt really GREAT!
Mile 8 dropped my Endurolytes tablets, grrrrrrrrrrr..... Good thing the aid stations were now serving Gatorade, so I switched to Gatorade from H2O.
Mile 9 caught up with Lence and saw Joanne Jager on the other side, words of encouragement were exchanged. I was feeling fatigue now, I guess dropping my nutrition bothered me mentally.
Ate another GU Roctane followed by water.
Photo courtesy of KenShelton
Mile 10 & 11 recovery run but still was passing a lot of runners and not being passed!
Mile 12 & 13 picked the pace up again just enough to finish within the new goal time.
Our official time was 2:09, no PR today but it was still a new Course Record for me. So it didn't turn out to be a total lost anyway. There will be another day to break that 2 hour barrier for me.
Thanks to Lence for dragging my butt and of course to Agnes for her Love & support, waking up early and waiting for 2 hours in the cold and rain is just has hard as running 13.1 miles.
For the geeks you can check our splits by clicking HERE
Thanks for reading!
Mabuhay,
Cerrone
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