When this race was introduced in 2017, I could not help but wonder if a bunch of Phish fans were behind its nomenclature. After all, Phish's guaranteed-to-be-epic 13-night run of the same name had been announced in January of that year. Then along comes this race in the spring in Montclair - a town sure to have its fair share of phans, as evidenced when the Trey Anastasio Band played at the Wellmont Theater in 2011 and 2013. Coincidence?
Since I never got around to running the actual race (usually in March), this year's circumstances seemed like a good opportunity to finally give the course a whirl.
Having lived in neighboring Little Falls for eight years, I know a lot of the roads in Montclair, so much of the course was on familiar ground. The race starts and ends at the Montclair Bread Company on Forest Avenue, in the eastern side of town, but this race hits just about every area except the northeast and southeast corners.
(Race map: https://certifiedroadraces.com/certificate/?type=l&id=NJ17550JHP)
I had written out turn-by-turn directions to take with me, which was especially helpful in the early miles. After turning off of Forest Avenue to head west on Claremont, there was already a bit of an incline. I took it in stride, not letting out too much effort, and hit a 7:10 for the first mile after turning left on North Mountain Avenue and crossing Bloomfield Avenue (the main drag through downtown) to continue on South Mountain Avenue. I can imagine that the locals, especially those in cars, are probably not too fond of this crossing on the actual race days.
Training had gotten pretty bad over the past couple of weeks, especially with speed work. Tempo runs got slower and more painful; track intervals were more labored. But as I hoofed it down South Mountain for the second mile (6:49) things started to feel like they were going to be OK. With a loop around the southeastern section of town, along Eagle Rock Way and Stonebridge Road, my third mile stayed strong with a 6:46, but that would be the last sub-7 mile of this race.
Retracing the path back up South Mountain and crossing Bloomfield again, I could feel the slowdown in the fourth mile (7:09), but the worst was to come when I turned left on Claremont Avenue and climbed a 115-foot incline. I had to take the steep hill as gingerly as possible because I knew it would knock me out beyond recovery if I did not. So after turning onto Highland Avenue, mile five ended up being 7:54, my slowest of any half-marathon ever.
The next two miles on the rolling hills going northbound on Highland Avenue (7:23 and 7:08) were followed by a right turn on Mt. Hebron and two miles southbound on Upper Mountain Avenue (7:16 and 7:29) and a left turn on Claremont to zig the zag northbound on North Mountain Avenue for another two miles (7:28 and 7:30).
During these miles, I could not help but think about how, a year and a half ago, these splits would have been slow for a marathon, let alone a half. How had things gotten so slow, so quickly?
Worse, a nagging pain in what I assume was my piriformis muscle (deep in my right buttock) - something with which I had suffered a few years ago - started creeping in. All I could hope to do was maintain the pace as best as I could through the twisty-turny next mile (7:34) along Parkside, Oakcroft, Brookfield, Edgemont, Parkway, Valley and Vera. That was a lot of turns and the paper on which I wrote the street names was rapidly turning to soaked shreds in my hand due to my profuse sweating. It was probably more than 80 degrees by this point.
I managed to push it to 7:14 for one last mile along Midland, Chestnut, N. Fullerton, and the home stretch from Rand to Forest, finishing the race near where it started with a final time of 1:36:09, my slowest half-marathon by more than five minutes (I ran a 1:30:40 at Seaside Heights in 2008).
The year 2020 is long going to be remembered as a dividing line in a lot of ways. In addition to life in a pre-COVID and post-COVID world, for me personally, it is the year I ceased to be a "fast" runner for my age and bumped down to "average". My goal is to learn to live with that, without beating myself up.
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