Jordan Daniel wins LI Marathon with second best time ever

In the 50th running of the Long Island Marathon, Jordan Daniel nearly broke it.

The 28-year-old Westhampton man won the annual first-Sunday-of-May 26.2-mile trek in two hours, 21 minutes, 5.4 seconds on a picture-perfect, warm day at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow — where the race starts and finishes. Daniel’s time is the second-fastest ever run at the event, eclipsing founder Paul Fetscher’s time of 2:21:49 in 1977. Dr. Lou Calvano’s 1979 time of 2:19 still holds up as the ultimate pace, Fetscher said.

“I’m glad to see it happen. Records are made to be broken. It’s beautiful,” said Fetscher, who lives in Long Beach. “If we had a cooler day today, [Daniel] might have had a shot at [the record] . . . I’ve got to hand it to Jordan for running very, very well. The nice thing is, the top three [all-time] times are all from guys who grew up on Long Island.” 

Daniel, the two-time winner of the Hamptons Marathon, said he ran a fast opening half, leading to the quick time on the back end. He wanted to run the first half in 1:09- he ended up doing it in 1:10.01.

“I started out pretty hot,” he said. “You’ve got to take what the course gives you and adjust, and that’s what I did. I just hunkered down, trusted myself, and ran.”

Daniel, who was 25th at last November’s New York City Marathon in 2:24:27, works as a mental performance coach and is studying to be a psychologist at LIU-Post in Brookville. He needed to submit to his own teachings Sunday. Marathon running is as much about mental toughness as it is physical strength, and Daniel needed both as he chased victory and, nearly, history.

For Daniel, mental toughness means not thinking about any of the hurt that the body tends to go through during a race as grueling as the infamous 26.2. The roads, especially around Nassau Coliseum, can get pretty lonely when pacing as fast as Daniel was. 

“I always try to drink my own medicine. What I tell my athletes is ‘the best talk is no talk,” Daniel said. “I’m always trying to get to a state of no mind.”

Daniel, who was a soccer player in high school, took up distance running while trying to get into grad school, as a way to cope with the process’s maddening uncertainty. 

“I started feeling super stressed and I just went for a run,” he said. “One day turned into three. Three turned into five. Five turned into six, and then six turned into seven. I needed something, so I just decided to go for a run.”

On the women’s side, Jennifer Zopp of Westchester’s Goldens Bridge, won in 3:08:32.2. Zopp said the race was close until the final half mile, when she pulled away.

“In the last two miles, I could see [the leader], but she looked so far away,” said Zopp, a 38-year-old middle school science teacher. “I just stayed in my head, kept running my race and, in the last half mile, unfortunately, she started to fade a little . . . I just had to dig deep and I never looked back."

Zopp’s best friend from college lives in Seaford. The marathon provided a good excuse to visit, Zopp said. She was skeptical of how she could attack a course without pace-changing hills, but the former winner of New Hampshire’s Manchester City Marathon did quite well. 

“The conditions were perfect,” she said. “There was very little wind. The course is great, not too fast and not too slow. I was worried how I would do with no hills, but I just kind of set it and forget it . . . Hills change up the pace. You can slow down on the up hills and use the downhills as a relaxer. Here, you have to keep pushing the whole time. There is no holding up.”

Claudio Telles, 45, of Astoria won the half-marathon in 1:15:43.4. Karima Modjadidi, 39, of North Carolina won on the women’s side in 1:22:16.7.