I really want Erica to write about this trip, since it was her first half-marathon, but the nut of the story is that years ago Erica’s eye was caught by one of the little paragraph-long descriptions of “cool races” in Runner’s World. Something like “run along a beautiful ocean front in New Hampshire and at the end of the race they greet you with a lobster roll and a Smutty Nose beer. Cool off by running into the Atlantic Ocean, if you like.”

“If I ever do a half-marathon, that’d be the one I’d do,” she said at the time.

At the start of this year, in the dead of winter, I asked Erica if she’d like to make this the year and she foolishly agreed. We planned a trip to New Hampshire for the race, to be followed by a tour of multiple New England states over the next few days.

The race, thankfully, was exactly as promised, and I’m incredibly proud of Erica that she trained for and then completed it. And then our tour of New England was gorgeous and added quite a few states to both of our 50-states goals.

Time: 3:24:41.7
Pace: 15:38
Place: 4387 / 4414
Place in Male: 1390 / 1392
Place in M40-49: 346 / 347