Westhampton's Jordan Daniel Wins 50th Annual Long Island Marathon

Maybe it was fate that Jordan Daniel won the 50th annual Long Island Marathon on May 7.

The Jersey City Marathon was two weeks prior, on April 23, and the 28-year-old Westhampton resident had tried for months to get “elite qualification” into the race, which would have given him certain perks and amenities and put him in a good position to run a fast time. After trying mightily, Daniel was denied elite status and decided to run the half marathon instead, which he won.

Running the half instead of the full marathon gave Daniel an opportunity to still seek running a 26.2-mile race and he thought the Long Island Marathon would do just fine. The 2013 Westhampton Beach High School graduate not only won the race, but crossed the finish line at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow in the second-fastest time ever of 2:21:05.4. Dr. Lou Calvano’s record of 2:19 set in 1979 is still intact, but Daniel did surpass the founder of the Long Island Marathon, Paul Fetscher’s time of 2:21:49, set in 1977. Fetscher was in attendance to see his previous mark fall.

It’s Daniel’s third marathon victory, having won the Hamptons Marathon twice.

“I guess it was one of those things where it was meant to be and why certain things don’t work out, in hindsight,” Daniel said of his victory. “I was feeling really crappy because I didn’t get into the Jersey City Marathon, so I still wanted to run a marathon and Long Island seemed like the most logical race, given what I’m currently in the midst of with a really heavy clinical semester as an aspiring psychologist. I could have done any other marathon, there were a few I was looking at out west, but logistically this one just seemed to make the most sense. I could sleep and wake up in my own bed, the course is flat.”

Daniel is a mental performance coach and is studying to be a psychologist at LIU-Post in Brookville. After his performance in the latest New York City Marathon this past November, where he placed 25th overall, Daniel said he has aspirations of qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics. While his latest victory and time hasn’t quite gotten him to reach the 2:18 threshold to qualify for Olympic Trials, he’s obviously not very far off and that continues to be his ultimate goal with the sport.

“I’m about three or four minutes away from the qualifying time. As much as I wanted to qualify on the day, as cool as that would have been to not have to think about that, it’s ultimately a step in the right direction and kind of reiterates my whole purpose with this running thing,” he explained. “Slowly but surely, my times keep getting better and I’m happy with that.

“When you’re out there essentially alone, you have to trust yourself,” Daniel added. “Obviously, I have a watch on and it’s always telling me how I’m doing, but I’m always trying to get into that space of not reading into the data and to react to what’s going on — no mind, out of state — but then I also don’t want to run too fast, so there’s that balancing act.”

Olympic Trials are steadily approaching in February, and Daniel is strategically planning on which races to do next, with his own wedding coming up in July along with continuing his studies. He has targeted the Chicago Marathon, a world marathon major, this October, as a place where he could qualify. There’s also a time trial marathon in the fall that he could run, where the settings are ideal for those who are trying to qualify for such an event as the Olympics. It’s a closed, looped course, and runners get their own bottles and pacers.

More recently, and closer to home, Daniel is also targeting June 17 as an important date for him. Both the New York Road Runners Queens 10K and the Shelter Island 10K are that morning and evening, respectively, and if he can work it out, he said he would really like to run both. He does have a wedding to attend the day before, though, so realistically he may just end up running Shelter Island, a race he’s already won twice.

“Until then, I’ll go back to the drawing board and my training logs, see what went well, what didn’t and get better at training,” he said. “Essentially, that’s what I love most. If I had to pick to train or race, I’d pick training over racing, 100 percent. I love training.”