Halloween Half In Cape May, NJ
With the lifestyle of moving every 3-5 months, we have to get creative at times to maintain our physical health. We maximize our hiking time when we can and running has become a staple of our lives. We are attempting to run at least a half-marathon on every contract. This challenge not only gives us purpose to our workouts, but also gives us the opportunity to explore different areas in each state. Over the last year, our shoes have taken us through the Arizona desert, along massive riverways in the Midwest, down dirt roads at night in Arkansas and along the Atlantic coast. For the New Jersey contract we thought it would be appropriate to set our sights on a Half Marathon that takes place on the coast in Cape May, New Jersey. Double win for us in the fact that the one we found is a Halloween themed race.
Mile: 50,998
Quote of the Blog: “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!” - Patches O’Houlihan
Movie Clip of the Blog: Dodgeball the Movie
With the race being a Halloween race, the first priority was to find great costumes to wear at the event. We shuffled through a couple great options like Richard Simmons, ballplayers from A League of Their Own, Jane Fonda, the Australian Break Dancer and many more ridiculous ideas. We landed on some epic outfits. I planned to dress up as a member of the Average Joe’s dodgeball team, while Amity would be dressing up on the dreaded GloboGym Purple Cobra dodgeball team! The stage was set for an epic dodgeball showdown in Cape May.
Cape May is on the most southern point of New Jersey. It is a beautiful coastal town with a bunch of smaller communities around it. We stayed outside of the main town in a nearby town called Wildwood. When we got into the area, we wanted to explore some of the unique elements around Cape May. The best way to do this is to open up AtlasObscura.com and search the town. This took us to an old WWII tower on a beach, the remnants of a sunken ship and to a really cool Victorian style area of the town where we explored all the shops and found some food. Walking around this town, you can feel the history. We were glad to be here on the “off season” as we could only imagine how crazy this place gets in the heat of the summertime.
The venue for the race was right on the boardwalk in town. When we picked up our event packets, we found a close by bar to get a drink at and enjoy the sunset views. We found a perfect spot with a rooftop bar called Harry’s Ocean Bar & Grill. The place went from busy to packed, as we found out there was a Jazz Festival going on in town this weekend. We lucked out and got to be sitting right next to the stage for some amazing jazz while watching the sunset over the ocean. Little moments like this are the ones that will stand out in our travel memories! We capped our night off with some Italian dinner at Sapore Italiano. We loaded up on carbs and got ourselves back to the rental for some sleep before the big morning.
The run started at 7:30am, so we needed to get up pretty early to get our costumes on, have some breakfast and over to the start. It was a chilly morning, but we knew we would be quite warm once we started running. Our outfits were on point! We had multiple people giving us shoutout before the run. Amity’s costume was a hit! She was dressed as Fran Stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky, “The Deadliest Woman on Earth with a Dodgeball.” We saw some other great outfits; like a crazy fast Super Mario, Clowns, Rainbow Tutus and everything else under the sun. There was 388 runners and a large portion of them were dressed up. This made for a fun event.
Amity and I had both set some lofty goals with this run. We had worked hard on our training, and we both hoped to see it pay off. With runs like this, it is hard for anyone to not run too fast out the start and get yourself worn out too fast too early. We both set out with a good pace to start. It definitely felt fast, as my personal goal was to finish in under 1 hour and 40 minutes, while Amity wanted to be under 1 hour and 50 minutes. The run would take us all around the area. It was a beautiful course. The scenic views helped pass the time, and kept things interesting as the run grinded on. We both ended up with a good pack of people around us that were helping us keep our pace up. I personally felt really good during this run. The training had paid off, and I was able to put up a time that blew me away. I finished in 1:38:27. Amity felt like she hit a little bit of a wall at the end of her run, but was really happy to beat her goal with a time of 1:49:15. She was doing her GloboGym Purple Cobra’s celebration coming through the finish line that she almost didn’t make her goal time. It made for some good and tired laughs! I ended up 9th in my age group and 22nd overall, while Amity pulled it off. She WON her age group! First place in Women’s 30-39 age group out of 75 women!!! I couldn’t have been prouder of her! She wakes up at 5am to get her training runs in before work! Most of her runs were done in the dark before sun came up. Hard work really paid off for her!
With a solid day already crushed before 11am, we had all day to explore the area. We started our day off with some delicious breakfast at the Mad Batter Restaurant & Bar. Parking was a trick, and came with a funny conversation with a very jaded local who was going to “call his friend, who is a cop” if I didn’t move our car. Made me chuckle a little bit, and feel for the guy. Must be hard being a local in a tourist town. Brunch was really good and included a celebratory mimosa and red beer. Following brunch we walked around town a little more, before heading over to the Harriet Tubman Museum. Amity had found this museum on her favorite Atlas Obscura website. The Museum is in a sight where Harriet help transport and free African-American Slaves in the 1800’s. We knew there would be a guided tour in the museum, but we did not know that we would be playing a large part in the tour and personally acting out the roles of different people in Harriet’s life. I crushed my role as Harriet’s dad and Amity did a fine job playing her mother! The woman giving the tour was great! She made what could have been very awkward more entertaining and engaging. We learned about her time spent as a General in the Union army freeing slaves as she did recon missions into Confederate plantations. We learned how she utilized New Jersey’s southern peninsula’s proximity Delaware to greatly reduce the amount of land-travel needed to help people reach the northern states and their freedom. We also learned how the Cape May area has played a significant role in the Underground Railroad and the further progression of African-American liberation. Definitely worth checking it out. After getting our history lesson in, we headed out for another landmark sightseeing adventure. This time was to the Cape May Lighthouse. We made a quick trip here, as we were tired and the area had just closed as we walked up. We followed up the lighthouse with a stop in the Cape May Brewery. We had already sampled a couple of their beers from the store, so we had to see what the rest of their brews were like. It was a really good brewery, with a great atmosphere and beer. We ended our night with dinner close to our rental at a restaurant in Wildwood called, MudHen. We had some great dinner here and a couple beers to round off an awesome day!
We were in no rush to get up and get going the next morning. All we had on our plans was to get home in time to watch some football. As we were driving back to Keansburg, we realized that we were going to be driving past Atlantic City, and thought we needed to check this place out. It was definitely shoulder season here. There was no one around, and the town looked a little eerie and dead. We found a couple things to check out on Atlas Obscura. First was an old Lighthouse, that was now overtaken by massive casino hotels. It was crazy to see how something that was so necessary 100 years ago was nothing more than a photo spot now. Most of the lighthouses we have visited have still served some kind of purpose, but this one wasn’t even big enough to be seen past the hotels. We also learned about a spot in Atlantic City called, Chicken Bone Beach. This was an area of the beachfront where historically African-American families were only able to go when the beaches were still segregated. The name itself is a nasty remanence of the injustices imposed throughout the civil rights movement. After our recent visit to the Harriet Tubman Museum, it was a fitting thing to learn about. We finished our time in Atlantic City with the most Atlantic City thing to do, gambling! We headed into the Ceaser’s Hotel and tested our luck. We did not walk out with anything, but we did enjoy our time in there and we were able to play on house money for a little bit. All in all, the 2 hours we spent in Atlantic City was enough to see what we needed to see. New Jersey has so many better places to go and things to do than this place!!!
We made quick work of our final drive back home. This was a long and physically strenuous weekend. We are both zapped! We are very proud of ourselves, and what we have been able to accomplish over the past couple years! This marks Amity’s fifth straight contract doing at least a Half-Marathon and marks my fourth straight contract with at least a Half-Marathon! With winter coming in quickly and our next move looking like we will be headed north & into the snow; we have already come to the decision to push our next contract’s Half-Marathon up in the calendar. With only six weeks to rest, recover, retrain and get ready between this run and our next, we have some work to do! Isn’t that what Living Rad is all about?