For the past, what, 15 years? or more, we have been going down to Freehold for the Born to Run 5 Mile race. But this year the race was cancelled because of the damage left behind by Hurricane Sandy. So instead we drove over the Glen Ridge, just a couple of miles from my sister's house, for the Ashenfelter 8k.
The race is named after Horace Ashenfelter, a lifelong resident of Glen Ridge who won the gold medal in the steeplechase in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. His family started this race 13 years ago. It's gotten to be a pretty big deal, and I can't believe it took us this long to start doing it. Now I think we are going to have to do it every year, even if we also still go down to Freehold the next day.
You can read about Horace Ashenfelter here and here. Sounds like a pretty cool guy.
We drove over to the high school on Wednesday night to pick up our packets. Considering this is a 2500 person race, I was surprised they didn't have a little more going on at the packet pickup. I think the local running shoe store could have maybe sold some stuff in there. Anyway, we got our bibs and D-tags and shirts (long sleeve, technical).
It's a pretty competitive race. It's the NJ 8k championship, and they also have a team competition. There are a lot of fast runners in NJ. I always thought the Born to Run race drew a fast crowd but this one is even more serious. I wasn't going to try to run especially fast and harbored no expectations of an age-group prize. I just wanted to get a good workout in.
Thursday morning we drove over there and parked a few blocks away from the high school. The race makes a loop of residential Glen Ridge (maybe it is all residential in Glen Ridge, not sure) that starts and finishes at the high school. While Tommy, Cathy, Michael, Thomas and Tori walked to the start, I headed out for a little warmup jog and also to visit the portapotties. I got there just in time to get in and out without stressing about missing the start, then headed out to the back of the pack to find the family.
It was a nice day for a run. Not too cold, and plenty of sun. Although this part of New Jersey is quite hilly, the race route is flat. You basically go about two miles out, then turn down a one block hill, then come back for a little over two miles, turn right again and run up a one block hill and head back to the finish. Oh, there's somehow a little stretch in there where you go by the finish when you still have a mile or so to go.
We had somehow talked Tommy into doing the race, and we considered running together, but I wanted to go a little faster than he said he did. And I generally have a hard time running with him. Even though he said he wanted to run 9:30s and I wanted to run 9s, I wasn't entirely sure that he wouldn't go out at 8:00 pace. I don't think he has a good handle on what his pace actually is, in other words. So I decided to just run my own race.
I passed Michael before we had gone a half-mile. He is a baseball player and pretty serious about it, but he doesn't do much running regularly. I wondered if he was going to finish the race. And I wondered what it says about his conditioning if he 53-year old aunt is passing him before we've even gone a half-mile. Maybe he was just jogging but I wasn't running all out either.
I achieved my goal of 9:00 pace, without pushing too hard. Splits were 9:08, 8:49, 8:52, 8:49 and 7:36 for that last piece that is short of a mile, for a finish time of 43:15. I was 37 of 102 in the age group, 431 of 1244 women, and 1258 of 2551 runners overall. Now I will confess that when it came down to the very end I did kick so I could break 45 minutes on the clock, and I did puke. Well, at least nobody who knew me saw it happen.
Michael finished just a little bit behind me, and Tommy was a bit behind him., while the others just looked on from the sidelines.
Definitely want to go back and run it again next year. It's a really nice event and close by so no reason not to.
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