The New Jersey Situation

Hey, everybody! Dan here. Nik and I are in New Jersey, ready to run the NJ Marathon (that's Nik) and the half-marathon (that's me). The weather in Long Branch is hot and dry, around 75 to 80 degrees. We're prepping for race day tomorrow by consuming massive amounts of fish and drinking gallons of water (it's the fishes' natural habitat).

I'm not sure if the NJ Marathon has online tracking. If they do, my bib number is 7770 and Nik's is 488. Apparently you can also watch the marathon streaming online at http://www.njdiscover.com.

Don't expect PRs from us, because we're actually not going for them. Nik's treating this run like a long training run and will actually be running with the 4:45 pace group, well below her marathon PR. I'm going to be running with a 12:35 min/mile pace group which should get me across the finish line in 2:44, which is my half PR. If I'm feeling up to it with a few miles left by the end, I might kick it up toward the end to shave a few minutes off -- but I'm not going to pull out any heroics here. We're both just going to run, not race.

Anyway, on to some fun stuff. Things we have seen so far:

• The first night we were here, a couple got married on the beach at Long Branch. They had a small string section playing an orchestral version of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." It was awesome.
• An old Mafia-looking dude wearing sunglasses over a massive bandage that covered one of his eyes.
• Lots of studded belts.
• A kid in a grocery store wearing a straw fedora watched his younger brother pull the cart backward into the store. The cart smacked into a display of plants. The kid in the fedora said, "Good job."
• Some kids fished a stingray thrashing onto the beach in Sea Bright, NJ. 
• "The Longest Yard" remake on hotel room HBO. It wasn't good.