Hamilton resident Nicole Tassello was the 49th female finisher at the Boston Marathon this year. More than 12,000 women ran the race.
The summer prior to her freshman year at Suffern High School in Rockland County, N.Y., Nicole Tassello heard from SHS track and field coach Jeff Dempsey.
Dempsey suggested Tassello go out for cross country in high school to stay in shape for winter and spring track. Up to that point, all she had done were sprints and jumps.
“Me being the naïve little ninth grader, I was like ‘OK, sounds great!’ and after that I never jumped again,” Tassello said.
For a while, it looked like she would never run again, either.
“My freshman year, I had no idea what was going on,” she recalled with a laugh. “They told me I’d never run more than a mile and a half.”
Whoever “they” were have had to eat their words several times over. Tassello not only went on to a stellar distance running career at Rider University, but on May 4 she finished an impressive 49th out of 12,022 women in this year’s Boston Marathon. A Hamilton Township resident who teaches 5th grade at Antheil School in Ewing, Tassello ran a time of 2 hours, 51 minutes and 54 seconds to finish 31st among American women.
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” the 23-year-old said. “I was kind of stunned.”
Rider head coach Robert Hamer wouldn’t go as far as being stunned. He fell more into the “slightly taken aback” category.
“I was very excited and surprised for her to have that kind of success in a big marathon,” Hamer said. “I knew the marathon was going to be a good event for her, but to finish in the Top 50 is a great accomplishment.”
It’s something Tassello has been gradually working toward since childhood. Growing up just across the border from Mahwah, she was always in a gym, on a field or running around a track.
After her inglorious foray into cross country, Tassello ran mostly the 800 in high school, although she dabbled in the 1,600 and 3,200 meters on occasion.
Once she got to Rider, Tassello became part of the 4×800 relay team. Midway through her freshman year she watched a 10K run, and told Hamer she wanted to try that.
“The first words out of his mouth were ‘Are you feeling OK?’” she said. “We needed a 10K person, and I was like ‘I can do that, I can run that pace for six miles.’”
Her first 10K race was the MAAC Championships at Rider and was run in 85-degree heat. The conditions were so tough that water stations were set up on the track. In a race where all the times were slow, Tassello managed to place and emerged from the race saying, “Even if it’s 85 degrees, I could do this again.”
And so she did, becoming one of the Broncs best distance runners before graduating in 2013.
“Nicole was not the most talented runner, but she made up for it with her commitment, dedication and work ethic,” Hamer said. “She was always willing to do whatever it took to be successful and realized that her chance for success and glory was running the longer events.”
Since the 10,000 meters was the longest, Hamer said “she dedicated herself to the event and the training required to be successful.”
Tassello set and re-set the 10,000 school record several times—including once at the Penn Relays in her senior year, which she called her proudest moment at Rider. Her mark was broken the year after she graduated. By then, she began exploring marathons as the desire to run was entrenched within her.
“Some days it’s hard, other days it’s nice,” Tassello said. “When your brain is tired, you can enjoy it, it’s good stress relief. I love seeing people’s expressions when I say I just went out for a 16-mile run. They’re like ‘You just did what?’ I really love the whole aspect of it. Whenever you go to races everyone is so nice.”
After graduation, Tassello dabbled in a few half marathons and decided to try a full in March 2014. She ran in the Ocean Drive Marathon, which goes from Cape May to Sea Isle, and not only won the woman’s division in a pouring rain, but did it in a race record time of 2:58:03. The effort qualified Tassello for the Boston Marathon.
“I just wanted to see how I would do, I had no idea,” she said. “I thought I could run somewhere around a 3:03, and as I was running I thought I could break three. I hadn’t even thought about qualifying for Boston. When I found out, I was like ‘I can actually run Boston?’”
She didn’t make her decision until registration opened last September.
Shortly after she committed to Boston, Tassello took third in the Atlantic City Marathon in October, and then ran a half marathon from Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania to New Hope and back.
Due to her teaching duties, her training in the fall and early winter consisted of four runs per week between five and 16 miles. She returned to double sessions in January, but in March had a slight setback with a hamstring injury that hindered her for a while.
Tassello got back in the groove and was ready to race but, despite watching the marathon on TV over the years, did not have a great knowledge of the course.
“I was really bad, I actually did not look at anything about the course,” she said.
She returned to Rider the week before the race and talked to a former Bronc who ran the marathon.
“He was telling me all this stuff I had no idea about,” she said. “Where these hills were, what I could expect. So I did have an idea.”
The fact that rain was predicted (and did occur) did not intimidate Tassello, since she fared so well in similar conditions in the Ocean Drive race.
The marathon begins in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and runs through numerous suburbs before ending in the city. The start consists of groups of runners referred to as “waves.” Tassello started in Wave One based on a qualifying time of under 3 hours, 5 minutes.
Once the race began, Tassello knew right away this wasn’t like anything she had ever experienced.
“It was crazy,” she said. “The first five miles of the race were all downhill, you can see in front of you, and it’s a wave of multi-colored shirts bobbing up and down. It’s the coolest thing ever. I saw it, and I said, ‘Wow that is so cool,’ and the guy next to me was like ‘I was thinking the same thing.’ I never run with a phone, this was the one time I wish I had a camera so I could get a picture of it.”
Because of the downhill start, Tassello was forced to alter her style, which she describes as “get out there, run as hard as I can and then die. I’m very impatient when I’m running, but it’s who I am.”
She knew, however, that she needed to utilize the downhill start to conserve her energy for what was ahead. Her goal was to average a 6:40 per mile pace and when she got to the bottom of the hill she was at 6:30. She figured it was due to the downhill slant, but when the course leveled out she was maintaining a 6:30 and figured she had some wiggle room.
When Tassello was five miles from the finish, her optimism started to rise.
“I’m like, ‘I’m gonna do really good, I’m gonna crash the top 100 women,” she said. “I wanted to run a sub 2:55. I thought if I had done that it would have really been something.”
She broke that with several minutes to spare. When she was informed by a friend that she cracked the top 50, it was as if she were dreaming.
“I didn’t know what to say, I’m still kind of shocked,” Tassello said. “I’m like ‘Did that really happen?’ It’s such a great feeling. I was kind of nervous going in, I wanted to make sure I was ready, I was hoping the hamstring wouldn’t give out. To turn out the way it did was great.”
And while it’s a source of pride to finish the Boston Marathon, it is that special kind of race in which the journey is just as great as reaching the destination.
“As I was running it, it was the first long race where I just couldn’t really believe I was running it,” Tassello said. “It was like, ‘Am I really here now?’ It feels so weird. It’s such a big race and even the whole atmosphere. All the spectators on the sides are all screaming for you, they’re so supportive.”
Every fellow runner, she added, was always willing to provide support.
“Even having so many people running around you, you’re never alone,” she said. “You never really have a chance to give up on yourself because everybody helps out. I actually didn’t even realize this till after I finished. When I got to finish line, I stopped, I was trying to breathe, and some guy came up, shook my hand and said, ‘You helped me so much, you pushed me through those miles.’ I was like ‘Really, I did?’ He was a few strides behind me.”
The crowds themselves are legendary. Tassello noted that each town on the route put their own spin on the race. The town of Wellesley is especially famous for its enthusiasm, with spectators holding signs like, “Kiss me, and you’ll PR today.”
“I’m pretty sure that entire stretch I had a huge grin on my face,” she said. “It’s so funny. It takes your mind off it. You don’t think you’re running, you’re just looking at all these crazy people.”
The biggest thrill, of course, is heading toward the finish line through the streets of Boston, “where you literally run in the streets. I’ve never been able to run the double yellow line in the middle of the road before.”
The entire event gave her the highest of runner’s highs, and has her considering entering the New York Marathon in 2016 (the deadline for this fall has passed). She will find another marathon this fall and is considering a return to Boston.
“I would really love to run it again,” she said. “The drive to and from Massachusetts is what kills me.”
So she doesn’t mind running for nearly three hours, but a four-hour drive is a little too much? It sounds crazy, but it makes sense since Tassello had to be back at Antheil on Tuesday morning.
What made the whole thing sort of humorous is that she went from the 49th fastest woman in one of the most famous marathons on Monday, back into an untenured teacher just hoping to avoid disciplinary action on Tuesday.
“It was really crazy,” she said with a laugh. “I hadn’t told a lot of people at school I was running, maybe a couple of teachers. When I came back on Tuesday, the principal gave an announcement and was giving congratulations to the school celebrity. I was like, ‘Wait, I didn’t even know they knew.’ I was scared because I took a day off on Monday. I kept thinking ‘I hope I don’t get in trouble for this.’”
,
