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.