E Murray Todd

This race report was originally written in March 2004

Winter was broken with a vengeance this year. Unless we get one of those March
surprises it will appear that the worst winter storms actually happened in Autumn, the early December blizzard playing havoc with a number of late season races. January was brutally cold but not too stormy and February was snow free which is all that you can ask for. The rare 29th day superceded what would normally be March 1, which for runners is the true end of winter when the spring races start up in earnest.

It took me 20 years of racing but I finally experienced the E Murray Todd half marathon
which took advantage of the beautiful weather to double their entries with 250 post registrants almost unheard of for a half marathon. One would hope that these last minute sign ups were not sedentary the whole winter and decided to take advantage of the conditions for some needed exercise. If they did they are most certainly in a lot of pain for the next week.

This was not just any half marathon. My best description would be Midland terrain with four extra miles which doesn’t mean it’s a slow course but it will challenge the strength of your quadriceps. Although the race has been around over two decades and definitely has a hard corps of annual returnees(I saw many people wearing previous years’ shirts) it does not draw the USATF crowd because it doesn’t offer points and has frequently conflicted with the Newark 20K. It is run by the Monmouth County Parks commission and has some nice amenities like the use of the Brookdale Community College facilities which includes a large parking lot and gym and locker room facilities.

Seeing the amount of runners who seemed in near mid season form makes you realize that there really is no down time for running. Although I have run all winter and had no problem with the distance, I was not ready to run any kind of fast pace and my slow time showed it.
But there’s a lot racing time left this year and I can only hope that other races this year can have the weather that we had on the last day of February.