21 miles along the Jersey shore

I live in New Jersey yet I rarely visit its renowned shoreline. Not that I have much of a reason to do so. I'm not much of a beach guy and, well, you know the type of people associated with the Jersey Shore.

But the idea of running along the famous boardwalks through several shore towns is appealing because it is a consistent flat stretch and the ocean breeze feels good on a warm day. So the Sunday after Labor Day, I headed down to Sea Girt for a 21-mile run through 10 Monmouth County shore towns.

Starting north along First Avenue through Sea Girt's Crescent Park, there was not much beach to see until crossing into Spring Lake, home of one of the shore's biggest five-mile races. The town has a beautiful boardwalk through its entire shoreline. Then it was a quick couple of blocks on the road over the town line, and back on a boardwalk through Belmar. I had to chuckle when I passed a frozen treats truck on the corner of 10th Avenue called 10th Avenue Freeze Out. Again, it was all boardwalk the whole way, and though I had to do some people-dodging on this beautiful sunny day with temps in the 70s, it was nothing but smooth sailing.

There is a drawbridge over the Shark River Inlet between Belmar and Avon by the Sea and it started going up just as I got to it. Using that downtime to check my Garmin GPS watch, I calculated that I had gone about four miles and was keeping a steady pace in the low 8:00s. It was exactly where I wanted to be for this last long run before the taper leading to my 12th marathon. This day was about covering the distance - no hill work, no speed work, only straight, flat running.

Back on the boardwalk through Avon by the Sea, Bradley Beach and the Ocean Grove section of Neptune, I could not get over what a perfect day it was - listening to a Phish show (7/5/94), running along these beautiful stretches of boardwalks with ease, and doing some people watching.

Asbury Park's boardwalk proved to be the busiest of the bunch that afternoon, but slowing down to maneuver through the people was no bother. I was not working against the clock. The only time goal was a negative split, so the slower I went in the first half, the easier that goal would be to achieve.

The boardwalk ends at the North Asbury Park border, so Ocean Avenue is the closest way to continue north through the two tiny municipalities of Loch Arbour (.141 square miles, population 193) and Allenhurst (.283 square miles, population 493), and into Deal and the Elberon section of Long Branch, the latter two with ridiculous, ostentatious mansions along the coastline. You know, the kind with gates to the driveway.

In Elberon, I hit the 10.5 mile mark, so I turned around and made my way back, pushing the pace a little bit to ensure that negative split. I built a small cushion of time through the next few miles, but lagged a bit through Bradley Beach and had to push harder than I should have needed to once over the drawbridge and back into Belmar.

In the end, I had to race the clock after all - exactly what I did not want to do, but I wanted the negative split. Pushing even harder just to get sub-8 miles, I chugged through Spring Lake. In the last two miles I expended every last bit of energy in the last two miles and wondered how I would run a marathon - at a faster pace for a longer distance - in only three weeks when I was struggling to merely achieve a eight-minute miles.

It was a close call, but I hit that negative split, finishing the second half a little less than a minute faster than the first, for a total of 21 miles in 2:49:55 (8:05 average pace).

Afterward, I drove back up to Asbury Park, cooled off by taking a dip in the ocean, took pictures of the old house in which my parents lived 43 years ago, and spent the evening experiencing the little joys of the town - eating ice cream, strolling the boardwalk, watching the sunset, and playing old pinball machines at the awesome Silverball Museum.