Another two...including 30k M-pace run)

It is getting harder to keep up with the posts lately. Yesterday was the bunkasai (culture day, a bit like an eisteddford) at the older boys' school. I got to hear singing and saw some dancing and plays, and even saw son No. 1 practice his speech for his upcoming Meguro-wide English speech contest. I was almost carried away by the excitement a few times, but luckily managed to contain myself. Late in the afternoon I got out for an easy 10.3 km in 51:42 in light drizzly rain. It was pleasant enough.

Photo: Son No. 1's class doing their thing. He is second from right at the back. Son No. 2 was blowing the alto sax in the brass band, but was completely obscured by the conductor, so I didn't bother with a photo.

So, the big news item to add is the 30-km marathon pace run I did today at the Imperial Palace. Mika-san had organised the outing and she was doing marathon pace with a couple of similar paced friends, Yoshiko-san and Shouji-san. I decided that a change is as good as a holiday and so joined them, riding over on the old trusty shopping bike. We were also joined by Ma, Dayan, Keren, Anthony, Shiba-san, and Martin. We ran one warm-up lap at a little slower than 5:00/km pace. I had a wee stop and than we were all off at our respective paces. I was lucky in that Martin had come out of hibernation and joined us, so he fell in with me for the first two laps. The first was definitely too fast, my old problem, at less than 20 minutes. The second was better at 20:20 (4:07; using 4.94km for a lap) . The next four were 20:21, 20:34 (refueling), 20:28 and 20:27. It was getting very tough by that last one. Leg fatigue was setting in and a few aches and pains. Most telling was that while average heart rate was 154 or 155 for the first four laps, with a max up near 160 on the hill, it was 158 for the last two with a max of 172 and 171 (90% of HRmax). So I have to question whether the average pace of 4:07/km for the run was not a little too quick, and would see me fade badly over the last 7 km or so of the marathon. I guess there is only one way to find out...

Later, the seven of us who remained had a nice lunch at the cafe in Hibiya park. I then rode back for a ways with Mika, she on her flash new racing bike. She was probably a bit embarassed about not being able to keep up with the shopping bike, but never mind :)