March 19th: Gotta Keep on Pushin'

Day 3 of the Richter plan was a success. 10.5 outdoor miles, bringing me to 22.25 for the week so far.

Red sky in morning...

I got going a little later than I'd planned, because Carol's bus never showed up and I had to drive her over to the high school. That actually wasn't the worst thing, because it meant that there was plenty of light by the time I did start.

Site of Ye Cottage Inn, destroyed in Sandy

I knew what kind of run I had in mind today, but I didn't know where I'd be going. I started out on one of my normal Cliffwood Beach routes, but then I decided to take it into Keyport and the Henry Hudson trail. One of the great things about getting off the belt is that you actually get to experience something. If you just keep running the same streets again and again, you lose that.

Of course, it was windy again. I think it's just always windy. Or maybe the wind knows when I am running outside. But it was generally out of the east today, and so I wound up doing most of the into-the-wind miles on the front end of the run. That's a big help. When you start getting bushed, it's tough to keep going into a stiff breeze -- as I found out on Saturday.

Even when everything's gone, there's still hope.

I turned back at the washed-out bridge on the trail in Union Beach -- the one I first encountered on Super Bowl Sunday. That was about 4.5 miles into the run and seemed like a good spot. As I wrote then, UB is still recovering from the storm, and the still-standing holiday tree near the trail really symbolizes the town's struggle.

My goal this week is for the accumulated miles to start piling up, and they certainly did. By mile 6, I was pretty tired -- the kind of tired I normally don't feel on a long until I hit at least 10. I hit 8 miles on Front Street near Matawan Creek, heading back for home, and boy was it tempting to turn down Gulden Street and cut it short, rather than go out to the water and back to get into double digits.

But that's not part of the Richter plan. This 3-week crash course is going to be about heavy mileage and pushing past previous limits. I will be ready for this marathon, and I will have done my homework by the time I hit the taper. Period. Normally, I advocate rest days, switching things up to do weight training, and even extra rest. But for this short amount of time, I plan to push myself to go as big as I can. Once I hit the taper, it will be time for rest and even to catch up on some of life -- the stuff you put on hold so you can train. That's a good goal for me: Get to the taper.

So I went out to the water and even did the big hill coming back. Checked MMR as I was getting close to home, and saw I was at 10.4, so I figured there was no point in not evening that out to 10.5. Total time: 1:36:34. A 9:11 pace, which is a little faster than I'd planned for. But I wasn't pushing VO2 max, so I'm really starting to think that my race pace is going to be below 9:00. Generally, I ran negative splits, but it wasn't an exact science today.

I tried out my new armband today, and it worked well. The phone wedges in there pretty tightly, so I used the camera on the screen side so that I wouldn't have to take the phone out. Still got some decent shots.

Also, my back doesn't seem to be improving. It doesn't affect my running and doesn't seem to be affected by my running, so I'm not concerned from a training standpoint, but I do think there's a doctor's visit in my future. It's worst when I'm lying down, which is making sleep less fun than it should be. The challenge is finding a time to go.

Tomorrow, I'm doing a nice slow 4-5 miles, almost certainly on the belt. Rest on Friday, and then Saturday is a big day: I'm going to see how I do in more optimal conditions than this past week.

Total miles since starting the blog: 459.0