September 3rd, Labor Day

Saying “Good bye” to another summer,  I drove to Manasquan this morning to pick up Rob’s surf board. It is a sad day in the shore rental world as they pile their garbage outside the house and suck down a few final beers before hitting the Parkway traffic for the slow, sad, final ride home of 2018.  Work, school and winter await.  But the NFL gets underway in three days and life is good again.

When the shade covered the turn on the cinders, I ran a few 150m strides. I was pleased to see that my relaxed pace was consistently near 9:00.  It leads me to believe that I might be capable of running at 8:00 pace on Saturday.  That would not be too embarrassing and probably qualify.

Good stats…

September 2nd, Sunday

Another evening solo session at the pool ended up being 30 minutes of work (20 mins. swim – 10 mins. run). Legs feeling better.

Steady stats-

September 1st, Saturday

Arlene at the Pavilion on a beautiful night.

This morning I ran a more comfortable, albeit slow, 30 minutes at Manasquan Reservoir.  After being scolded by Rich Refi for poor warm-up approach, I preceded the run with some targeted hip and leg exercises plus 6 x 100m straight-aways at gradually increasing effort.  That probably helped!   Rich constantly tells me, “Do what you teach your kids to do!”  Why can’t I remember that?

I have to remind myself that I am competing in the NJ Senior games on next Saturday for fun to avoid becoming too anxious about my current foot and leg issues.  The fact is simply that I have not run fast for at least five months.  I have remained fit and healthy by cross training, but that has not kept my legs in a condition for running fast.  The truth is I don’t enjoy the New Jersey Games half as much as I have enjoyed my experience in the National Games. So, I really do want to qualify because it provides me a goal to focus my training and a good reason to plan a road trip.

This perfect, late summer evening Arlene and I had a romantic dinner at the scenic Avon Pavillion overlooking the beach.  We walked and danced to soft, live music on the boardwalk afterward.  Arlene nicely described it as a “sweet” evening.  It was!

This lucky guy could not hope for a better day.

Stats-

Sleep = 8 hours

Diet = 8

Weight = #154

a.m.HR = 54bpm

I-Mpfd = 6/7 for first 2 minutes

I-Mad = 0

Heel pain was minimal while running.  Still doing aggressive golf ball rolling.