Yesterday I ran the Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon. It was a fairly small race (only 1000 runners) with a fun neighborhood feel. There were no corrals at the start and even starting at the back of the pack my start time was only 30 seconds off of the official start.
The course map
And we're off (that's what 1000 runners looks like)!
While 1000 runners is smaller than many other half marathons that I've run, it is still quite a large group. The race started with a downhill or flat course. The route was fairly narrow for the first 3 miles. This was good and bad, its always good to start slow - but in Sleepy Hollow I knew the hills would be coming and would have liked to use the easy part of the course to make up time I would lose at the end. Nonetheless the views of the light house and Tappan Zee bridge were astounding as we ran along the water front.
Nice view!
The route also had a bit of trail running between miles 2 and 3. I dont ever do trail running, so I had to be especially careful with this part even though it was quite short.
Trail area
After the third mile, the course widened and the impromptu course entertainment started. There were many fun signs, a fellow playing a bagpipe and even a few kids rocking out in their front yard. The neighborhood support makes racing in Sleepy Hollow different from some of the larger race series that I've run. Its wonderful to see people get up to come out and cheer. The volunteers manning the water station are families with kids so eager to give the cups of water away that I felt bad when I didn't want water at some of the water stations. While this race didn't have names on the bibs supporters called out numbers. I became "5-1-9" for the morning and didn't mind at all!
The difficult hills started around mile five and continued for the rest of the race. During the race I dreaded downhill sections because I knew what went down would have to go up again. Overall it wasn't bad though. I knew that there was no way I would set a personal record on such a challenging course, so I didn't bother to pay attention to time. I just took in the beautiful scenery, the folks out cheering, and the camaraderie with the other runners.
There were many signs encouraging runners up the hills.
Around the tenth mile, Alek caught up with me and we ran together for about a half mile. Volunteers were handing out oranges around this point as well. Alek reassured me (falsely) that there was one more giant hill to get up and it would be all downhill from there. It was mostly true, except there were a few small but steep hills after that point (including an uphill leading up to mile 13).
"Oh! Hi Alek! How'd you get here?"
Gnomes teasing runners at mile 11
I finished in 2:11:03 with a 10:00/mile pace. Not bad for such a challenging course. You can find all of the official results
here. This was by far the most difficult half marathon I've run but I loved every moment of it.
Well earned finisher's medal!
My
playlist was well suited for this race until the end. The third to last song that I heard while running was Darts of Pleasure by Franz Ferdinand. As the song was playing, I thought that it would have been great to cross the finish line to the refrain
"Ich heiße super fantastisch!" I would have finished to Linkin Park's "One Step Closer", but flipped past that to finish with The Foo Fighter's "The Deepest Blues Are Black." Both "One Step Closer" and "The Deepest Blues Are Black" are power songs for me and should have been placed earlier in the list. Lessons learned for next time!
After the race we stopped off at
Stew Leonard's and picked up some flowers, fresh soups, pasta, and a really tasty butternut squash pasta sauce! All that, and we were back home by 3pm.
Sleepy Hollow is a beautiful small town. The park near the lighthouse would be awesome for a summer picnic - and you can get there fairly easily from the city by taking metro north (Philipse Manor station). Well worth a visit if you have a free afternoon!
