When Irish Eyes Are Metric Miling

"They said it,d be something special in New Jersey"
Bono when U2 played The Medowlands in 87 on The Joshua Tree Tour.
For the third time in three years a spectacular performance at the New Jersey C,ships for yours truly.
Going into todays race I was hopefully but not over confident of my chances,it,s been a long week since my bumpy ride in the 800m at West Chester last Friday followed hard on the heals by 4 days of extreme heat which put the kybosh on a repeat workout Monday or Tuesday,and when I finaly did hit the track Wednesday I felt the track hit back.
Slated for a 3.15pm start I opted against heading upto Monmouth w/ Chuck for his 5,000m since that was going off at 10.10am,I couldn,t see getting there at 9am and killing 6 hours till race time,so I took the train to Trenton where Ray kindly offered to pick me up and drive up to Monmouth.
It was a little after 1pm when we arrived and we set up camp under the bleachers of the main stand,trust me it was a warm day and shade was vital,I heard tales of woe from a few runners regarding the heat on the track from earlier races but I opted not to concern myself w/ the fact I,d be running in the middle of the afternoon.
2.30pm soon rolled around and it was time to warm up,was I ever greatful for my USATF baseball cap to keep the sun off my head during my mile warm up,by the time I,d done my stretches it was 2.55pm,I headed for the infield and got ready,16 of us in the field,the plan was whoever took it out from the gun go w/ them,5th going into the first turn and a long way back to 6th,I,d gotten off to the start I wanted.
67 seconds at 400m 2 CPTC guys out front followed by one runner then a gap to 4th and then me,I was feeling comfortable,2.16 at 800m a 69 second lap and the first CPTC runner pealed off,obviously there to pace his team mate through the opening 800m,now I was 4th,the pace was close to what I,d ran 2 weeks ago at Widner but this was a different type of race altogether.
3.26 at 1,200m a 1.10 lap at this stage my main thought was getting into third place,rather than kick w/ 200m to go I bided my time till 150m b4 making my move,as I pulled along side the 3rd place runner he responded and we both went wide to lap one of the back markers,my momentum carried my passed both runners and suddenly entering the home straight I felt the 2nd place runner from CPTC was there for the taking,I continued to close the gap on the leader but sadly ran out of real estate,2nd in 4.12.64,my second fastest ever 1,500m thanks to splits of 67,69,1.10,46.
W/ hindsight I wished I,d began my kick w/ 200m to go now,maybe I,d have caught the winner who ran a 4.11 but I won,t quibble w/ my time, place,or overall performance,this was one of my best ever 1,500m races,second only to Nationals last year in time and performance.
An interesting foot note,this years NJ C,ships came 3 weeks earlier in the callender than last year,on July 7th last year I ran 4.15.74 b4 running a 4.11.73. four weeks later in Orono,today I ran 4.12.64,Spokane is still eight weeks away my dream of going sub 4.10 got a little bit closer this afternoon.