Race Recap | Project 13.1
- Tim Waanders
- Apr 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 3
by tim Waanders, PT, DPT, FAFS
Last weekend, on a beautiful spring Saturday morning, I headed up to Rockland Lake State Park – right over the border of northern New Jersey and New York – with a small crew of Hoboken Track Club runners. The goal: racing Project 13.1. We all had individual aspirations, but given the reputation of a race like this, we were all hoping in one way or another to have one of our best half marathon races on this day.
Project 13.1 has been a race in various forms over the years, organized by Trials of Miles, and has gained a reputation for being a flat, fast course with some major PRs and blazing fast times. The last time this race went on was back in 2023, with the goal of trying to get as many people under the half marathon Olympic Trial Qualifying times as possible. That year, 7 people (3 men, 4 women) were able to OTQ…so, yeah, this is a pretty fast course.
This year, the race was open to anyone to register for anyone, with the main intention of getting people under the 90 minute mark in the half. Given the demand, this year it was broken up into 2 waves – Wave 1 went off at 7:00am for those looking to run faster than 1:16:00. Wave 2 began at 8:25am for everyone else. There were some speedy friends of Finish Line PT, including our own Connor Hesselbirg, who participated in Wave 1. Shout out to Connor for running a PR of 1:10:12!
While Connor was already running laps around the lake, the rest of us arrived and the energy was already buzzing. Music was blasting at the lap checkpoint/finish line, runners in Wave 2 were simultaneously cheering on friends in the first wave as well as jogging around to warmup for their own race, and breakfast was cooking up in a tent over in the far corner. The course itself is a flat loop around the 3 mile perimeter of Rockland Lake. The first mile of the race involves a 0.5 mile start in the opposite direction, followed by a hairpin turn toward the direction the rest of the race will follow – clockwise around the lake for 4 laps. A little over an hour later, the race had its winners. In the men’s race, Patricio Castillo finished with an insanely fast time of 1:02:48 (he also won this race back in 2021). In the women’s race, the crown went to Anne-Marie Comeau with a time of 1:11:46. The non-binary winner was Avery Prizzi with a time of 1:07:22!
As the Wave 1 finishers recovered and cooled down, Wave 2 lined up as a group with a kinetic energy brewing that I knew was going to launch us all toward the finish line. Nervous and excited chatter honestly distracted many of us from the time, because before we knew it the horn went off and the race had begun. I was lucky to have a fellow teammate and friend to race with as we were aiming for the same goal: sub-1:24:00. We both started together and looked ahead of us for the 1:24:00 pacer – another friend of ours in Hoboken Track Club. We found our guy Kyle a few hundred meters ahead as we approached the turn to go clockwise, and we settled in as a group with other local runners from crews like Central Park Track Club, Dashing Whippets, and Bennu Athletics.
The first two laps went smoothly, hitting a pretty even 6:20 pace. Personally, that felt good as that was the pace I was hoping to maintain for the race. Kyle was crushing the pacing, the pack was leap frogging each other as some of us felt a surge of energy and others needed a second to pull back but stay on target. Everyone knew for pretty certain that today was going to be a good day by this point.
Lap 3 rolled around and while things were still going smoothly, I can feel the boredom start to set in. Don’t get me wrong, Rockland Lake State Park is a beautiful retreat from the hustle & bustle of the concrete jungle. But you can imagine that the third time looping the same path can be a little less exciting than the first two. Either way, the group was locking in and gearing up for the final lap to finish the race off. All was going smoothly for me until about the last mile, when I could feel my calves starting to cramp. This doesn’t happen to me often, but this hasn’t been my first rodeo with the issue either. I tried to change my gait (as a PT, that’s never a good sign) to avoid the cramping from getting worse, but that did not help. The only thing I could do was slow up my pace.
At this point I was starting to get a little distraught. I had been crushing the race with no issue and felt great, but with 1000m to go I wasn’t sure any of that was going to matter. Luckily I had Kyle up in front of me, encouraging me to stay on him so that I wouldn’t fall under my goal time. At around the 800m mark, my calf cramping miraculously lightened up enough for me to pick my pace back up and finish the race strong. Despite the hiccup at the end, I still ran a 1:23:40, giving me a 33 second PR. My friend and teammate, Hanna, also got under the 1:24:00 mark ahead of me, and being able to run with the most elite racing buddy I can ask for is always a win! We had some other Finish Line PT crew members running in Wave 2 as well: Jimmy Williams ran 1:19:37 and Andrew Lyle ran 1:25:17. Shout out to my boys!
Smiles, hugs, and laughs were shared between old and new friends at the finish line as we basked in our accomplishments from the day. Trials of Miles provided racers with breakfast, so after we hobbled around for a quick, light cooldown, we headed over to grab some coffee and quiches before hopping into the car and making our way back down to Hoboken. Project 13.1 was a huge success for the squad, and for everyone involved, and I cannot recommend the race enough for those looking for a fast springtime half marathon race local to the NYC area. Cheers, and see you all out there for the next one!
