When Dan Jacobs first won the Frederick Half Marathon in 2017, he did so in cold, rainy conditions that added an extra challenge for all runners.
But with the rain holding off and temperatures moderate at Sunday’s running of the half marathon, Jacobs set a blistering pace of a 5 minute, 30 second mile and showed he couldn’t be caught even in ideal conditions.
Jacobs, a Frederick resident and Hood College graduate, won the half marathon for the second time, crossing the finish line in a personal-best 1 hour, 11 minutes, 59 seconds, more than two minutes clear of the rest of the field. Baltimore’s Meaghan Murray took home the women’s crown with a time of 1:21:09.
“I’m very familiar with the roads. I’ve run all these roads forwards and backwards countless times,” Jacobs said. “It’s a fun race.”
That familiarity helped the 30-year-old manage his run. Jacobs began to pull away around the 3-mile mark in downtown, accelerating past the field down Market and Bentz streets. Soon, he could not see anyone behind him.
That let Jacobs keep an even pace the rest of the way, ultimately crossing the finish line more than two minutes faster than his winning 2017 time.
“At that point, it’s just get there,” Jacobs said of seeing the finish line at the Frederick Fairgrounds. “You’ve gone over the Monocacy Hills, and you just want to finish as quickly as possible.”
Murray had a slightly more difficult path to being the top female finisher.
She ran the Boston Marathon two weeks ago, so she wasn’t sure how her body was going to hold up Sunday. Murray kept pace for the first half of the race, and when she realized her legs felt good, she made a play for first.
“I was planning on just running behind [the leader] as long as I could keep up for,” Murray said. “I just found I was right up on her, and I just made a move and took the lead.”
That was around the halfway point of the race, and her lead slowly crept up across the rest of the course. By the time she crossed the finish line, Murray was just over a minute clear of second-place women’s finisher Caroline Bauer.
It was Murray’s first win in her second time running the Frederick Half Marathon. The 34-year-old bettered her mark from the 2017 race by more than eight minutes.
“This one was way more fun, definitely better to take the win,” Murray said.
