This is a recap of a fun race weekend away with running friends at the New Jersey Half and Full Marathon. We were a group of 6 Jersey Shore Babes and Bros, made up of my Hfx Road Hammer training partners Linda and Dave; along with 3 athletes who I have been coaching long term with Love Training More: Doreen, Donald and Allana.
During my taper for this race, I started reading a book called “The Happy Runner.” The early chapters are all about finding your “why.” The authors, Megan and David Roche, write a lot about joy. They were speaking my language.
If I thought about “why take a trip to the USA to run a race?” The answer was to spend a weekend doing what I love so much. Surrounded by my running family. My focus was experiencing joy. Making new memories. Cheering for my running family in a glorious way, celebrating their bravery in going for it. Even if we don’t race to our full potential and it’s not our day or we bonk, there simply is no failure when you spend a weekend doing what you love.
“Happy Runner” has a beautiful line about this: “I race because I never know when it will provide an unforgettable moment of enduring beauty and I am willing to wade through the stuff along the way to get there.”
So in pursuit of that unforgettable moment, we travelled “down the Shore” on Friday, to a spectacular 6 bedroom Victorian mansion, 3 blocks from the Ocean in Asbury Park.
On the Tuesday before the race I had a wonderful Elite surprise. I received an email from the race’s Elite Coordinator. I had made it into the Elite Field. Linda already had received elite entry which meant free entry. Way back in January, I emailed the coordinator asking if I could have an Elite Bib and never heard back. This email told me that the Elite Field came with things: Special parking pass. Special tent to stay warm in at Start Line. I pretty much jumped up and down. I texted my husband, Mom, sister and my Jersey running family. I bottled up that joyful feeling of opening the email and held onto it.
A race weekend with your running pals is often a blast because of the time spent relaxing and laughing. Little did I know that the Elite Entry would be become the joke with the most mileage for Dave, Donald, Allana and Doreen. Like more than 42.2km mileage. All culminating in a hilarious experience at the expo where there was no elite fanfare, no simple elite bib pick up and one loud volunteer proclaiming:
“We don’t really do Elite with this race. There’s no special bag drop. There’s no food for you. There’s no real elite anything.”
And then another volunteer, upon being unable to find my bib, loudly questioning, “Are you an Elite? Like should you even be in the Elite Field?” Which apparently doesn’t exist. What to do but laugh!
And then do some expert Elite-Level shopping at the race expo. This girl loves a good race expo, elite runner or not.
We pass the rest of Friday and Saturday eating good food, visiting with my nursing school best friend Shannon who now lives in Cherry Hill, NJ, shake out running along the beach and boardwalk and totally falling in love with the Jersey Shore. I have lots of love for everything that I see and I feel so lucky to get to run in this beautiful seaside part of our continent on Sunday.
We have a wonderful team meal prepared mostly by Donald and we set our alarms for 5:00am Sunday morning and we are ready to roll.
The race day weather was totally perfect. Our crew had been laughing lots over “Redmond Rules” which we have all forbidden Doreen from following during the race. Linda and I do however follow Robson Rules which means wear as little race day clothing as possible.
The race start is about 10km from our Airbnb at Monmouth Track, a famous horseracing complex. We descent upon the race track along with 5700 other people in cars which means it is not a fast descent. We are unable to get into the Elite Parking lot because no one knows how to direct us there. We do get to enjoy the one single Elite Perk of using the empty 3 porta-a-potties in the Elite Parking Lot.
I braid Linda’s hair into “fast braids” to match my own.
Warm-up is hurried and then there’s walking around to drop our gear bags. Linda and I are so late that we have to hop the fence into corral 2 as the national anthem plays. Dave and Donald hop in 2 minutes later.
The race begins with a bugle player in formal attire playing “First Call,”a horse race’s official bugle call. The gun sounds. Springsteen blares and we are off.
Linda and I trained this entire training block together. Well, correction, it took me about 6 weeks to catch her in workouts and another 4 weeks to run comfortably next to her. But we have been running together. We have slightly different race styles. I like to be a little more aggressive. She likes to be a little more cautious. We are not sure if we will be stride for stride but we know we will be together even if we are a few steps apart.
1km: The first km is mostly downhill and we’re all Springsteen amped up and we try very hard to be relaxed. We split through side by side at 4:00. My plan was 4:10. Gotta get tight.
2-5km: I’m better for the second km at 4:09. I pull ever so slightly ahead of Linda and this is ok. We’re still together. Then she’s back beside me at 3km. We spend the first 5km trying very hard to be relaxed because of course it feels so good now. I see the things. Horse fields. Lush greenery, sprawling mansions and kind people cheering.
Our 5km split together is 20:31. When Linda and I run together, we practically run on top of each other. We are forever elbowing each other by accident. It’s our thing. We have probably elbowed each other 20.31 times by now.
5-10km: Linda and I are awesome and kicking ass. We are not being dictated by our watch but we are doing well, knocking off each kilometer, one elbow at a time. For many stretches, we are solo on the road, a 2-person chase pack to the the 2:55 marathon pace group. I love these kilometers: Linda and Erin against the half marathon world.
I am a runner who often uses mantras: words that I repeat to myself over and over again so help keep my mind sharp and focused on the task at hand which is running fast. I usually prepare a few in advance but often the most powerful ones are the ones that pop into my head organically. Sometime during 5 and 10km, I started to repeat the words: “Love. Together.” Love was for loving my sport and racing hard. Together was for Linda and I together. So kilometers, I was zoned out, repeating these words and keeping stride with Linda. I was so happy.
The course had man (MANY) turns. When I was writing race plans for my 3 athletes, I opened the “turn-by-turn guide” and there were 13 turns in the first 11km. At the turns, I thought about our guys Dave and Donald just behind us, imagining that they could us up here blazing a fast trail with Love and Together and this was a good thought. We are all better together and we are out here together.
Around 8km or so, in what I can now see on the course map is Sand’s Point, we were running by enormous properties with sprawling affluent homes. You could smell salt water. Though you couldn’t see the ocean yet, you could tell these were oceanfront properties. Here, I said one of my few words to Linda, aside from, “we gotta relax and keep the pace tight.” Here I called out,
“Linda! Beach!” Pointing.
I am a beach lover. My children are beach lovers. Here I thought about a necklace that we bought my 7 year daughter while on PEI-vacation this summer, it reads “Mermaid Soul.” I had another thought that “my soul will always be called to the ocean.”
With those words in my mind, in my soul, and Linda running fiercely next to me: I was so, so happy.
Dave wanted to see Bruce Springsteen sitting in a lawn-chair at the end of this driveway, cheering for us. This area is nice enough that The Boss might live here. We might see him.
The course then carried us across two bridges. Beachfront spread out on both sides of us. My soul is called to the sea and is also running joyfully next to the sea.
In hindsight, in writing this and in recollection: knowing that I was in search of a transcendent racing moment of enduring beauty, this stretch of 2km along Monmouth Beach was it.
We split through 10km in 41:47. We’re good.
At some point, just after 10km, Linda and I became swarmed by runners. We both looked at our watches. Did we accidentally slow dramatically? No. It was Marathon Relay Runners.
12km: Around this point, my perceived effort starts to creep up. I tell myself that it’s ok. I feel exactly how I should. I know I had these words in my athlete’s race plans.
13km: Linda got a few steps away from me at a water stop. We turned the corner and the waterstop surprised me. I wanted to take my next gel at 14km but the stop is upon us. I furiously dug the gel out of my back shorty shorts pocket, without dropping the car key that all 6 of us were relying on, gulped it down and then grabbed some water. It was way less coordinated than it reads and Linda smoothly glides ahead.
What to do?? I had a brief thought of “I don’t feel like this today.” But no! I need Linda! I need to keep her next to me. I surge to catch her and fall back in step. But now the effort is more. I burned through one of my Super Mario mushrooms and it’s always uncertain how many you will have for the day.
I’m back next to Linda now but I’ve let the gate of dangerous thoughts open. “This is good enough. We don’t want to do this anymore.” Those thoughts aren’t true. I don’t have to listen to them. They tell me that Linda will run away from me. Eventually. I replace them with Love and Together and we carry on.
I’m actually a little blurry on exactly what happens next. I pieced this blog post together over 3 days, while examining my Strava data.
I recall that I chose to think of my Road Hammer training partner Tash. I told her I would run a kilometer for her and our mutual motto of “audacious hope” (long story). These words have served us well. I decide this km is Tash’s km.
We drop two x 4:11/km splits over 14 and 15km. We wanted to be a little faster. Here we are.
I see a little girl and her dad. I think of my little girl and get a punch of emotion. It’s too strong, I have to put it aside. I hear another dad say to a little girl, in reference to Linda and I: “Look, they are running together and working together.” This emotional response is just Goldilocks right.
A guy is holding a blow up of Trump and a sign that says “Punch Trump!” Runner after runner punch it and I do too. “That one is from Canada!” The crowd cheers. We run through a town. There’s a guy in a bacon slice costume. It’s funny. I spend way too much time thinking about what the name of this town is. I can’t see any signs. I want to focus on racing. But the town name?
Then comes the next water stop. My brain isn’t firing and I’m having a hard time making decisions. Water or Gatorade? From which side of the road? In the blink of an eye, Linda is quicker through the water stop than I am and she’s 6 steps ahead. I am just confused. But I seem to know with certainty that I won’t get her back. The mushrooms won’t work. My 16km split is 4:17/km.
Entering 17km, I need and want to make a choice. I can give up and jog it in. Or I can continue to fight to run fast. In the last big weeks of my training cycle, I had reread the book, “Running with the Kenyans”. There is a great story in there about famous Coach Renato Canova who said after one of his Kenyans won a big-City marathon in the USA: “if you want to be a top athlete you have to be a little bit wild, not be an accountant.”
At 17km, with Linda now a chunk of seconds ahead of me. I decided that it is time to be a little wild and start letting loose more effort in pursuit of keeping her in sight. 17km is too far from the finish to dial in a finishing surge. I’m not making reliable decisions anymore. WILD is all I can think about so I run wild. If I can get back to her, yes. I go. 17km split is back to 4:08/km.
The 18th km is straight down 2nd ave, the last straight-away before we turn onto the beach road to finish. I tell my body to keep at it. Keep fighting. It seems physiologically unable to respond. I tell myself, “push. Pop.” My most time-honoured running cues. My body doesn’t seem to know what to do with the words or the orders. I am gassed. This km: 4:21.
The 19th km makes 4 tight turns bringing us on the oceanfront boardwalk and the final 2km straightaway to the finish line. I’m now a thoroughly gassed and confused mess. I put my bad foot in a hole and almost fall over. I see myself doing this in slow motion. I hear the crowd gasp. I right myself and keep running. I look at my watch and I understand nothing of what the numbers mean. These are just a random collection of numbers. A guy catches up to me, “Is your ankle ok?!” I answer, “I am a mess.” The human contact with this guy snaps my attention back into focus. 19km rings, 4:24/km. Ouch.
I can’t leave it like this. I look at the beach next to me. It’s impossibly beautiful. I have this amazing stretch of beach to run towards an amazing finish line. I will do this right.
In my athlete race plans, I had placed a super duper quote in there for this last 2km section:
Fate whispers to the warrior; ‘you can not withstand the storm.’
The warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’
Once we all hit this boardwalk, the plan was to become the warriors. The storm. Of course, your brain scream sat you that you can’t withstand the storm. But you are the storm.
I am the storm.
I finish as best as I can with all I’ve got, alongside this stunning beach, with a 4:11/km, a 4:13/km and 3:56/km over the final 300m on my watch. I do a good storm.
I run right through the line. I turn my watch off after the line, face tipped to the sky in storm-gratitude thanks and relief. I then look at it and it says 1:29:01…… Congruent with my impressive history of :00s. OMG.
Finish Line 
Finish Line
I walk to Linda and feel jubilant. I made it. She made it. It was seriously so much fun together. We hug and are giddy and happy and our dialogue is a loop, “It was so fun. We were so cool out there running together. Aren’t we so cool together. That was so fun”
That finish line feeling, that amazing high, it’s really high on this day.
We wait for our running family and celebrate each of them across the line.
Back on the bus that returns us to our car at the start line, Doreen has her phone out. She’s checking results. I don’t know what my official time is. I tell the team that I am mentally prepared for the 1:29:00. Doreen looks at me sheepishly. Her phone against her chest. She hands it to me. I know it reads :00. I look:
1:28:59!!!!!!!
We all cheer and hoot and holler for the :59. This will be an enduring moment of happy in my race memory bank.
My little travel team proceeds on to celebrate our days in proper style. We enjoy our Victorian home for a celebratory beverage. We take the Seastreak Ferry in Manhattan and do as many NYC things as possible in the 1.5 days. We enjoy each other and our accomplishments. Linda finished 53 sec ahead of me with a 1:28:06. Doreen ran a 62 second PB with a 1:50. Alanna had a very strong showing with a 1:45, less than one minute off her PB on full IronMan 70.3 training. Donald ran a 3 minute PB with a 3:06. And Dave clocked another notch on his marathoner belt with a 3:15. The weekend was everything I hoped for. Happiness.
Sure I’ve run faster over the last 12 months. Why this result today? There’s no need to explore why. There’s nothing I need to say. This is what I had. I am happy. And because:
OH HONEY TRAMPS LIKE US, BABY WE WERE BORN TO RUN
One Response
This was super fun and inspiring to read!! Felt like I was there with you guys! I am super proud of you all for having joy and pushing hard- you are right- that’s the victory and take away! Too many races I’ve handed in the towel I those painful, confusing Kms- you didn’t give in #amazeballs
I also am loving the pics and your love for jersey shore- makes me want to go there- what an incredible finish line!