Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Sandblast beach run & the start of Training!

I had a minor scare this past Monday, when I bent down to pick something up, and had my right knee lock up on me. This happens from time to time, but I always get right up. This time it had me in pain, and limp bad enough to scare me to see my doctor. After a check of it, he prescribed rest and Naproxen, and by Thursday I was pain free and able to run, so I ran 6 miles.
I was hoping for a full week of running, since I had a 4 mile "beach race" on Saturday. Oh well, at least it was a minor injury, and I am relatively healthy headed into the 18 week marathon training.

Now the run part, what better way to celebrate your 43rd B-day, than with a race! In Wildwood, Saturday there was a race I have been wanting to do for years, and everything worked out that I was able to do it. The SandBlast beach run, has a 2 or 4 mile race, on the beach, from 15th street in North Wildwood, to the Crest and back.

As my luck would have it, it was a windy night! I asked one of the beach patrol how strong they were, and 15 mph sustained. So that meant the 1st two miles where into the wind! I had never done a race on the beach, so I was looking forward to the challenge.

My only goal, without training for this, and with pretty much no running the week before, I wanted to keep it around 8 min. miles. I met and was talking with a fellow runner at the start, who also was doing his 1st beach race, and was hoping to be around the 7:30 avg. I wanted to stick with him, but lost him in the crowd at the start. I did try a lot of drafting off the runners in front of me, but with the lost week of running, my legs felt like they weighted a ton.

I knocked off the 1st mile in 7:36. It felt like a struggle, so I wasn't sure what I would have left for the rest of the race.

The wind was a killer, it felt a lot stronger than the 15mph I was told. I could feel that I backed off and ran the 2nd mile at 8:06, which would be my slowest mile of the race.
As usual in the shorter races that I run, I always seem to get passed by the 10 yr old girl, or the person with the stroller. I had a man fly past with a stroller, on the beach, in the 3rd mile. It was nice to have the wind at your back for the final 2 miles, which I think was helping stroller guy. Mile 3 was a 7:42 mile, and I had found a group of 3 runners to stick with for the last mile. The legs were toast, but I kept pushing, and was lucky enough to stay with the group until about the last 1/10, when they kicked it in. I did the 4th mile in a nice wind aided 7:03, for a finish of 30:29, by my garmin. No age group award on this day, there were a lot of good runners in this race.

It was a fun race, and hopefully I'll be able to run this again, with the proper training before hand.

Now not even 12hours later, I was up and out the door to start my Marathon training. It was tough to get up at 6:00am, and run 10 miles! I did an out and back to Cape May. Not one of my best runs, but I averaged 9:30 miles, best was mile 3, a 9:14 mile and slowest, mile 6, a 9:44.

What was nice about the run was the last 2 miles were at 9:19.

Our last day of our mini-vacation, was today, Tuesday, and I got out and did an out and back to North Wildwood, with a finish on the boardwalk. I had a 6 miler planned, but somehow I messed up my course, and added a mile, not that I mined. I did the 7 miler right in my time range at 9:02. and had my best mile as my last. Hopefully that's a good sign of things to come.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Happy Belated Birthday dude. I am glad you had a blast on the beach. Since the race was entirely on the beach, was there anyone who ran barefoot?

Just come to think of this... 2 more years, you will move up to a new age group. Something to look forward to.

Good luck with the marathon training.

P.S. I am thinking of setting up a 20 milers on Manasquan-Capital Trail at the end of August (like we did in Seaside Height like spring). Up for it?

Unknown said...

That is a great way to spend your birthday! Happy birthday! That race sounds like a great time. Good luck with training.

Denise said...

Happy Birthday!! I think running in the sand would be SO hard. Great job!!

Hard to believe it's marathon training already...Philly will be here before we know it!

Unknown said...

what a great birthday party. Even though the 10 miler might not have been at the pace you wanted it was still pretty even splits. I look at that a lot in order to judge some fitness.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

You ran that fast ... on sand?

Ay yi yi!

Progman2000 said...

Seems like just yesterday we were training for Philly. I'm so glad I finally jumped in. Time to buckle up and enjoy the ride!

joyRuN said...

Beach runs are tough!

If you're around, Ocean City has a 5mile race on Labor Day Monday (starts at 23rd St).

BommaMama said...

Hey Bill - happy belated birthday, the beach race sounds so challenging. You did great!! Good luck with the training - you're off to a great start.

Darrell said...

Happy Birthday!!

The beach run sounds like a fun one. Way to get back out there the next day for that marathon training.