He may have been a minute or two outside his ambitious pre-race target, but Otis Robinson was happy to have run a competitive 56 minutes 18 seconds in the Boilermaker 15K race in New York State.

A remarkable improvement in his racing performances since the beginning of the year continued for the Swan’s Running Club president as he mixed it with some of the best runners in the famous 9.3 mile race and finished a highly creditable 186th out of 10,882 finishers.

Robinson, 33, found himself at the back edge of the elite runners’ corral as the race started and was surprised to see the top athletes heading off at a relatively slow five-minute mile pace.

Spurred into action, he made an exuberant attempt to catch the leaders as he ran an opening 5:46 mile. However, he quickly settled back to a more realistic pace after heeding the advice of fellow Bermudian Anthony Raynor who was watching from the sidelines.

“He called out and told me to pull back the reins. So I settled in to get some oxygen back and my second mile was 6:06 and the third was 6:02,” said Robinson.

The fourth mile was the most challenging, fully uphill, and as a result Robinson lost a number of places clocking his slowest mile split of 6:37 as he worked to maintain a conservative pace with half the race still to run.

However, the next mile was almost a minute quicker and his fastest of the race, in 5:30 and from there to the finish he knocked out successive sub-six minute miles.

Although he had ambition to run around 53 or 54 minutes before the race, Robinson’s 56:18 equates to stringing together just over nine miles at an impressive average pace of 6:03 per mile.

The race was won by Kenya’s Nicholas Kamakya in 43:21, and first woman was Romania’s Lidia Simon in 49:23.

Amongst the other runners taking part in the 30th Annual Boilermaker race was US marathon legend Bill Rogers, who spoke with Robinson afterwards.

“I met him and we talked and he indicated he’d like to come out for the International Race Weekend in Bermuda,” reported Robinson.

He is now under the wing of a Los Angeles-based coach who has mapped out a training schedule that alternates easy and hard days and currently covers a total of 60 miles a week, much lower than the 100+ miles he was hammering out earlier this year.

Some of the tougher sessions involve running three miles at 5:30 pace. But the schedule also slots in a rest day and recovery runs.

Robinson is looking to continue focusing on high quality 5K races overseas in order to get the high level of competition he needs to progress to the next level — which he and his coach agree is running 5K consistently below 16 minutes.

“I will be concentrating on 5Ks up to January and from them I’ll start to focus on May 24. I’ll likely do a 5K in Rhode Island in mid-September and probably only one race in Bermuda between now and next January.”

The father-of-five continues to put his new found drive to improve as a runner down to his wish to honour the memory of his late mother Deborah Elizabeth Santucci Smith, who passed away in the days before last year’s May 24 Marathon Derby.

His appearance in the Boilermaker 15K came courtesy of backing from quarry boss Jonathan Cumberbatch.