April 13th: Is Yardwork Cross Training?

The taper continues, and it's still weird.

Yesterday morning, I ran a 12-miler. The weather was absolutely perfect. I took Lily along for the first 6 miles here in Cliffwood Beach. She made a friend for a bit down by the water -- a nice woman was walking a big black dog. I dunno what breed, but the two of them got along great. Unfortunately, since we were running, I couldn't hang around, and I didn't get a photo. (Also, it would seem kinda weird for a runner to stop and ask a stranger for a photo, right?)

After I dropped the dog back at home, I looped around for about another mile in the 'hood before heading west to my friend Dave's house -- we live about 5 miles apart. This is the route I took back in September, in one of my first blog entries. Sometimes you just need a change of scenery, but there are a few parts of this run I don't like for safety reasons:

Looking northbound near exit 120

• The sidewalk across the Garden State Parkway is very narrow. Although I'm always fascinated by the view from the bridge.
• There's a bend on Morristown road near Cheesequake Park where there's really no shoulder, and it can get busy.
• There's a 90-degree bend on Partridge Road in Old Bridge with no shoulder. And because of the way it bends, and the zero visibility, it's one of the few spots in which it's safer to run in the direction of traffic.

Right after that last bend is what I used to perceive as a big, big hill. Here's what I wrote back in September:

But...in the last mile, there's a HUGE hill. I knew about it, I was planning for it, and frankly, I was dreading it. I turned the corner and got my first view, and wow, it really is big. But you know what you do? You just keep on pushing. And let me tell you, once I got to the top, it was great.

It's still a fun climb, but I think this is another example of how far I've come: I was looking forward to it instead of dreading it. Nice, solid climb at the 11-mile mark, and since I'm limiting my miles and overall energy output, I enjoyed dialing up my climbing gear and motoring up.

I got to Dave's neighborhood a little short of 12 miles, and I still felt great. I looped the long way around his block and wound up with 12.35 on MapMyRun. I easily could have gone quite a ways farther. That's the weird part -- shutting it down when you know you have plenty left in the tank. Dave drove me back home as part of his morning errands, and then we went about our day.

First front-porch beer of 2014

Jackie and I went to a friend's child's 3rd birthday party yesterday -- it was one of those mostly adults parties with a few rugrats running around. Let me just get this out of the way: It was beer, not Gatorade. I also had a couple when I got home. I figure that's probably the last beer I'm going to have at all until after the race, so I decided to give myself a little license -- a last hurrah.

The other highlight of the party, for me, was getting to talk to the birthday girl's uncle, who's running Boston next week. He's a marathon vet and is shooting for a time in the 3-hour range (because he hasn't really been training that hard!). I picked his brain about training, tapering, race strategy and a bunch of other stuff. It was really great to get his insight, and it felt good to get some confirmation that I'm on the right track. I'll be watching for him next Monday.

Today I was going to go to WOW for some strength training, but this nagging abdominal strain hasn't really healed up yet -- and probably won't until after the race. I'm not sure how much good work I could get done there. Plus, with the gorgeous weather today, I think it's a good opportunity to do some yardwork. It's probably reasonable for that to count as cross training, right?

Total miles since starting the blog: 595.7