Eastern States 20

Kittery, Maine

Sunday, March 27, 2022

I had signed up for this race over two years ago!  In fact, it was back in late 2019 that I signed up.  This was the last of my COVID race holdovers, as the 2020 race was deferred to 2021, and the 2021 race was deferred to 2022, and finally the 2022 race actually happened!  Yay!

Jana, Brady, and I arrived the afternoon before the race, checked in to an AirBNB apartment right across the street from the ocean, on the race route on Route 1A in Hampton, and then went to pick up my bib, shirt, and a couple of vanilla GU packets from Runner's Alley in downtown Portsmouth, before meeting Matthew for a pasta dinner.  While they did offer packet pickup the morning of the race, I just feel better the more I can have prepared the night before a big race.  Back at the apartment, the three of us took a stroll along the beach before going over race day logistics, entering addresses into GPS, and turning in early.

Have bib; ready for tomorrow.

Bib and shirt pickup at local running store.
(From race FB page.)

Race morning:  Got up about 7, and had plenty of time with an 11am race start.  Woke up before my alarm, took Brady for a walk, and was really glad I did NOT wear my race shoes or socks, as I got sand in both pairs of socks and shoes I wore.  Breakfast was oatmeal and a bagel.  Not very exciting, but it's pretty routine for me, so stick with what works, right?  I had originally planned to just run to the bus shuttle start, but as the Winnacunnet High School was two miles away from where we were staying, Jana drove me there instead.  As I intentionally arrived towards the end of the two-hour bus loading window, I just got on a bus right away.  

The bus was pretty much full, but no one sat next to me.  Must have been the smell.  Once the doors closed and we were en route, I was noticeably bothered by the cacophony of so many concurrent conversations.  I hadn't experienced that before, but maybe because I really haven't been in large indoor or enclosed groups in over two years?  Fortunately, the bus ride was short and we disembarked at Traip Academy, Kittery, Maine.  It's still more than 1.5 hours to race start.  Now what?

Sat down on the gym floor and waited.  Caught up with the
few fellow Rhode Islands I recognized.

With 45 minutes to go, I went out for an easy warm-up of just over a mile.  The start line is 1/2 mile from the school, so I went to check that out and used a bathroom in a coffee shop to avoid the long, long line back at the school.  Came back inside, ate a bar I had packed, stripped down to race attire, bundled up my gear drop bag, dropped it off at the appropriate bus where unlike Philly, there was zero wait, and headed to the start.

At the start line, I caught up with Mike Daniels.  The temp had warmed up to 47° by now, so I felt warm enough standing around in short shorts and a singlet, but the wind was in excess of 10mph from the west and was forecast to increase in strength and mix in some winds from the south (our general direction today).

First ten miles:  As the police were getting ready to temporarily shut down the road, I lined up in about the third row.  The gun went off, and 468 of us headed directly into the headwind.  This continued only for 1/3 mile, before heading south.  In less than a mile, we crossed the Piscataqua River into New Hampshire.

 

Leaving Maine,
heading into New Hampshire
(pic from race FB page)

I quickly latched onto a pack of eight.  This proved to be positive in a number of ways.  Other than one turn, the course really was not marked at all, which wasn't necessary for most of the race following Route 1A, but it could've been an issue early on in downtown Portsmouth when the leaders of our pack all of a sudden made a hard left and I had to correct to catch back up to them.  

The pack leaders clearly knew the course, and at least half were wearing a running singlet of the local Portsmouth running store, Runner's Alley.  I mentioned that I would try to hang with them until we got to Route 1A (Ocean Boulevard), which was about 4 miles in, especially as they were mentioning specific runners that got off course early in the race in past years.  Yikes.  They responded by saying they were targeting a pace of 6:15-6:20.  OK, I may hang a little longer as that sounds appropriate for me.  I guess?  Having never run a 20-miler before, it seems it should be somewhere midpoint between my most recent half (6:07 at Vermont) and my most recent full (6:29 at Philly).  

Most of the guys in the pack knew the first two overall runners, who we could only see for a mile or two.  But they did not know the 3rd runner (Daniels), who we could see for about four miles, and they were questioning if he was legit, as purportedly he was telling them he would be running sub-6s for the race.

About five miles in, our pack started to show some chinks in the armor.  One guy split off and took off ahead, and the guy at the back of the pack dropped off.  The remaining six seemed to fairly evenly carry the load, with alternating pulling at the front.  I was grateful to have the safety of the pack and occasional protection from the wind, so I was happy to pull for a while as well.  Occasionally we had to drop to single file when the shoulder narrowed, but most times it was double file.  The conversation was entertaining, the miles were clicking by and a bit faster than I had planned for, but I didn't want to run as an island.  Just before ten miles, the joke amongst the group was asking if they could switch to a 10-mile option.

Start to mile 10 stats:

• Average pace:  6:08
• Fastest mile split:  6:02 (twice)
• Slowest mile split:  6:13

Second ten miles:  It was right around ten miles when the pack fell apart.  Two guys went ahead as we went into the headwind in Rye on a bend around a cove that jutted inland.  One guy went ahead of me and I did my best to stay with him.  Over the next mile, I caught and passed the 3rd guy in our pack, putting me in 7th overall, but I never could catch the two leaders of our [now dissolved] pack.

Miles 11 and 12 were slower at 6:15, which I attributed to me running alone, but this is what I had loosely targeted anyway, so I was fine with that.

In Mile 13, we ran into the 1/2 marathon back-of-the-packers.  They had started at the same time as us 20-milers and they were running the last 13.1 miles of our course.  There was plenty of room to pass them and they didn't impede me (yet), but the only issue I had, as I've written in other races with multiple distances, is that I feel like I am running faster than I really am only by virtue of passing so many people.  That could just be me, but I've had that sense before.  Entering the town of North Hampton, we make the only turn off of Route 1A, as we're on Willow Ave for 1/2 mile of quiet roads past church gardens, and at this point, I can see one of the two leaders of our original pack and even the two of them have split up now.

As we re-enter Route 1A in Mile 14, there is a rare downhill drop (40') and the sweeping views right along the ocean here are absolutely gorgeous.  At Mile 15, as we enter Hampton, two police cars stop traffic in both directions and have us cross from running the right to the left-side of the road.  Two guys fly past me like I'm standing still.  Uh-oh, have I slowed down that much?  Are scads more about to pass me?  We go past the apartment where we stayed at North Beach, and this gives me the momentary notion to stop and just go inside the apartment.  (Jana and Brady have checked out by now, but I still have the entry code committed to memory.)  My pace at this point has slowed to mid 6:20s.

In Mile 17, just before reaching the Hampton Beach area, we head west (into the wind) for a short period, and it feels brutal, as the gusts must be over 20mph.  Even when we head southerly again, there are occasional gusts out of the south (i.e., headwinds) as well.  Mile 17 is my slowest at 6:36.  Ugh. 

Mile 18 feels better, which might be because there are buildings around us at Hampton Beach blocking part of the wind.  We have a full lane available for running here, as there are slowly rolling police cars with lights keeping vehicular traffic out.  My biggest issue here was that three rather large people were crossing from the beach across the road on a crosswalk, and only looked right (in the direction of traffic) and not left (in the direction of racers).  I don't exactly have much energy at this point, but yelled three times to get their attention.  By the time one noticed me and alerted the other two, I was pretty close to them.  No contact, but an awkward weave between them.

In Mile 19, as we cross a water channel from Hampton into Seabrook, we are relegated to a cement sidewalk lane on a bridge.  The problem is there are a number of [slower] half-marathoners here, and I no longer have room to pass.  Compounding the issue is some are to the left side of the narrow bridge lane, and some are to the right.  So I have to do a bit of weaving, and sometimes call out "On your left!" and other times "On your right!".  One woman yelled back that she thought I should be on her left, not her right, but I mumbled that I was just doing my best to get through and plowed ahead.  In Seabrook now, the winds were once again battering us as it was all open marshlands around us, but I knew the end was near and kept pushing.  In the distance, I could see cones and a police car with flashing lights at the Massachusetts state line, and I assumed that was the end of the race.  It was!  Almost.  The race didn't end on Route 1A, but instead turned off very shortly into a non-descript neighborhood and ended.  Done!

Coming towards the finish line.
Note the "Welcome to New Hampshire" sign
behind me, as I'm just barely into Massachusetts here.
(Pic courtesy of Jana)

Mile 11 to Mile 20 stats:

• Average pace:  6:22
• Fastest mile split:  6:15 (twice)
• Slowest mile split:  6:36

Final results:  2:06:04 (6:14 pace), 9th overall of 468, 2nd in age group.    Full results here.

Should I be leaning this far over?

Finish line!  Note Matthew and Brady at nine-o'clock in pic.
Race photographer pic.

Someone was happy to see me!

There was another old guy in age group that beat me by 16 seconds, albeit he is six years my junior.  

Nice medal!

And shirt.

Areas that went well:

• Pre-race pick-up at Runner's Alley was very well organized.
• Bus shuttle and race gear drop went off like clockwork.
• Tri-state race concept was pretty neat!
• Course was generally very scenic.  And flat!
• Results were posted real time on timing company site.
• I was lucky to get in with a good pack of runners for half the race.
• I ran (and slightly beat) my goal of 6:15-6:20 average pace.
• Nice medal and shirt.
• Free professional finish line photos.
• Bonus:  upon finishing the race, for the first time in my life, I saw a snowy owl!  It was perched in a marsh alongside the road.

Areas that left room for improvement:

• Website went months without any updates.
• If you go to the website even today (9 days post-race), the race is still referenced to in future tense, and there is no link at all to results.
• My e-mail to Race Director with a race question went completely unanswered.  And I e-mailed him a year before the race actually occured!
• The bathroom lines were ridiculously long.  There were only 5 porta-jons (for almost 500 runners) and a single men's stall and urinal inside, with access to other bathrooms inside roped off and a custodian yelling at runners that tried to go to other bathrooms inside the school.
• No mile markers on course, and almost no course markers.
• While I had the advantage of having a full lane to run in throughout North Hampton and Hampton, when we came back to Hampton Beach for lunch, the police were gone and the mid- and back-of-the-packers were relegated to the cement sidewalk for miles.
• The cement lane on the bridge into Seabrook was clogged and limiting, although to be fair, I don't know what the safe alternative would have been.
• Inconsistency on instructions.  The website indicated that post-race there were would be "pizza, snacks, and drinks" at the high school, but since there were already some fruit, snacks, and water at the finish line, I wanted to confirm with a race official before going "out of the way" back to the high school.   I was told there was no more food back at the high school beyond what was here at the finish line.  Glad I asked (and hopefully got the right info!); went out to lunch instead.
• Apparently did not apply enough BodyGlide, or at least not in all the right places.  Had an annoying abrasion and chafing in my right underarm that hurt and took about four days to go away.  Lesson learned.  I hope.
• My last ten miles were much slower than my first ten.  I can only blame so much of that on the increased winds and the pack falling apart, and have to take responsibility that I didn't run a smartly paced race.