So yesterday I ran the inaugural Rehoboth Marathon. It was a whirlwind of a time. In the course of 23 hours I drove over 400 miles to get there and back. Minutes before I got to Delware there had been a freak snowstorm and I saw no fewer than 8 accidents over the course of 50 miles-5 of which were severe enough to shut the highway down.
But this is not a story about bad Delaware drivers, rather a really great marathon. For those who don’t know, Rehoboth is a beach community. There’s not much going on there after Labour Day, so they’ve decided to organize a marathon.
It was a charming experience-I’ve run three marathons before and each of them were large and urban (Vancouver, Stockholm and Philadelphia). This was the exact opposite – there were only 97 marathon runners and maybe 200 half marathoners (contrast this with today’s Philadelphia marathon – 18,000 people!). Moreover, this was truly a rural route – just look at all the green in the image below.
The race started on the Rehoboth boardwalk, literally just as the sun rose over the clouds on the horizon. It was beautiful but cold: -3 Celcius at the start and there was snow on the boardwalk!
The race was basically a big exploration of Cape Henlopen State Park (pictures). We ran into it and saw some sand dunes; then it was back through town and into some farmers’ fields (increasingly filled with McMansions – you can literally see the housing crisis here). We then turned onto an old rail line that is now a running path; it was like running through a cathedral of trees. From there, it was along a canal into the town of Lewes and then back down into the park from above.
We ran past old World War II fortifications – bunkers, towers and artillery – that have been reclaimed by the sand and pine trees. Then we climbed a small hill (there was maybe 20 feet of elevation in this entire race), turned around and did it all in reverse.
Since there was no elevation, the biggest challenge was the wind off the Delaware Bay. There was a ferocious breeze coming off of it. You can sort of see this from my time/kilometer stats below (courtesy of my Garmin Forerunner):
It’s a little tough to tell from the data (message to Garmin: give users the ability to smooth out the spikes caused by losing contact with the GPS satellites), but basically there’s a difference of 1 minute/kilometer there, due entirely to the wind.
So, how’d I do? My trip computer tells me I ran it in 3:27:30. That’s a new personal best for me well south of my target time of 3:30, so I’m content.
Now I’ve got about 8 months off until I start training for next year’s New York City Marathon!
Update 1: The results are in. I finished 58th out of 407, or 41st if you exclude relay participants.
Update 2: I forgot to mention that Delaware is home to a lot of migratory fowl. And when I went to leave my hotel I had to wash Wendy’s car as a small army of birds had befouled it. It looked like I had parked it underneath a pigeon-infested overpass, except that it had all happened in about 20 minutes. Bad luck!