1st Annual Asbury Park Marathon Relay

Today I ran the 1st Annual Asbury Park Marathon relay. This race is put on by the NJRRC, who also manages the NJ Marathon and which I happen to be a member of. The race director sent out emails months ago introducing this race to participants in the last NJ Marathon. The race is a relay which consists of teams of up to 8 people. There was also the option of registering as a “Team of One”. Registering early and being a member of the NJRRC got me into the race as a Team of One for $30, so it was hard to pass up considering it is towards the end of my Philly Marathon training cycle. There was also the added bonus of Mrs. Progman registering a team consisting of several friends and family. And I was able to talk a couple of other marathoning nutjobs, including Flyers26, into running it, so it all but guaranteed a good time.

This race is an eight loop course which I knew would be a bear mentally so companionship was key in not going crazy. Luckily my buddy and experienced marathon pacer Colleen was also running today so I hitched onto her for most of the race. My approach to this race was just to run it as a slow training run. The weather forecast was for cold, rain & 20 mph winds, so I was not looking forward to it when I woke up Sunday morning. I had a great run though, ran comfortably through the entire thing and finished in 4:26:51.