Nick Schollmeier was Alaska’s top finisher at the New York City Marathon this year, completing the race with a time of two hours and 48 minutes. Schollmeier ranked 68th out of 4257 men in his age category and 402nd out of 28,000 male competitors overall.
The race takes athletes through all of New York City’s boroughs and is usually the largest annual marathon in the world. Schollmeier said competing in it felt amazing.
“For 26 miles it was shoulder-to-shoulder, two or three deep the whole race except on the bridges. I think they figured there were between a million and a million and a half spectators and people cheering the runners on,” he said.
Schollmeier, who coaches cross country at Dillingham’s middle/high school, said he has been running since the third grade and that his experience as an athlete helped him coach himself through a training regime.
“I put together a racing plan and followed it day-by-day, and modified as I needed to, but ran by myself all over Dillingham,” he said.
While running in New York offered distractions from the race’s grind, Schollmeier said he also tackled the race by breaking it into parts.
“We tell the high school and middle school kids when we're coaching ‘break it into chunks.’ And so, for the marathon, I tried to break it into four chunks: three 8-mile chunks, and then a 2-mile chunk,” he said.
His advice to young runners back home, he said, is to look at the race as a journey.
“Sometimes we train hard and it doesn't always go the way we wanted it to go,” he said. “That's why you give it another shot next year, or you give it another shot next weekend.”
Schollmeier arrived back in Dillingham on November 7. He said he was still a little sore but expected to be feeling back to normal soon.
Get in touch with the author at christina@kdlg.org or 907-842-2200.
