Once you hit the fall, there are at least a dozen races every weekend in NJ. I try to stay close to home unless it is a special race or I know a bunch of people who will be running it. Today's choices were Edison or the Parkinson 5K in Princeton. I have run the Princeton race a bunch of times so I was on the fence about running it, then I got a call from "the senator" aka Ken Vercammen. He talked me into running in Edison and wanted a ride.
Ken just recently had knee surgery so his running days are on hold and according to his doctor, maybe over. If you think I run too many races, Ken averages about 40 races a year and places in his age group about 75% of the time. I had to take the van to pick him up and take a seat out so he can keep his leg straight.
Ken was coming just to get out and be around runners since he can't right now. While he was sitting I headed to the start line. My goal was to run a sub 21 minutes. I have been running right around that time for the last few months so the only thing that would hold me back was the 1/2 I ran last week.
I felt sluggish at the start but the first 1/2 mile mile was downhill. There weren't many top runners so I knew I could finish in the top 15. As usual the young kids all took off like it was a 100 yard dash but would be soon gasping as they hit the first minor hill. I was passing a few folks and was jut content to pick up a runner every 200 yards.
The race was in a park and the halfway turn around point was at the edge of the park. I knew something was wrong when the leaders bolted right past that point. The 3 volunteers at the turn didn't even say anything, just let them go. It didn't affect me because I was about 200 yards behind the leaders. I passed a few runners and knew I was near the front since I saw the leaders at the turn around. My goal was to pick off as many runners as possible. We had to run up the hill at mile 2.5 so I could get a few more runners at the end. I thought I heard the guy in front of me was in 3rd so I tried to get him but he was 5o yards ahead of me and just couldn't catch him.
I finished in 20:44 and 4th overall and 1st in the 50-59 age group. Ken would have easily won the race outright since the winning time was 19:40.
The race was run very well and they had overall 400 runners. T-shirts were average and they ran out of water for the slower runners.
Not sure where I am running next week. I want to run the Jersey Shore 1/2 marathon, but I will see how my week goes.
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