Yes, the race happened nine days ago, but there are a few things that need to be mentioned about the best Half Marathon in New York City.

First, thank goodness for Tracy Olson! For those of you who don t know, when the original results came out, the CPTC Women s Open Team placed somewhere around 11th or 15th in the race. See, as originally posted, our fifth place women s runner placed around 800th amongst women in the race, and, well, this severely brought down the team score. Fortunately, the results forgot to put Tracy Olson as a member of our team. The inclusion of her score boosted our team from somewhere around 15th to 3rd place! And that is why running is so great, as more than any other sport, every team member counts! If anything, the fourth and fifth place runners count MORE than the first and second place team runners! Name me another sport where the fifth best person on the team is more important that the team s top person!

Second, if I had to sum up the race in two words or less, I d go with the phrase: tremendous support. Although Brooklyn is arguably the toughest race of the year to logistically get to, we had plenty of teammates who weren t training for the half-marathon nor in half-marathon shape come out solely to help the team. With so many great CPTC members running Boston that same weekend, everyone knew the Brooklyn Half would turn into a numbers game. Tons of members took one for the team that day. Just as importantly, we had a ton of supporters out on the course cheering us on. The CPTC Spirit Squad included Sid Howard, Erik Goetze, Will Berriel, Sarah Alaei, Laura Ford, and plenty of others. I can honestly say that we had the best fans out on the course that day!

Finally, race of the day honors have to go to Joseph Lowe. With a howling wind in our face throughout the majority of the point to point course, it took a mammoth effort to achieve a personal best. Yet, Joseph fought through the entire 13 plus miles, and scored a huge PR on route to his first ever sub 1:18 half marathon. Running 30 meters behind Joseph the entire way, I could see how much he struggled through those last few miles, but he truly persevered, and got rewarded with an impressive time.

It s almost vacation time for me, as I head off to North Carolina for a few days. Expect to see more website updates once I return.