Two on the trot

The Thursday-night run-home-from-work-Friday-morning-run-to-work pattern has been upheld.

With coach 2P's words ringing in my ears, I kicked up the tempo of the run home last night as much as I could within the constraints of running fast on busy Tokyo footpaths. It was weird. Felt like I was flying at times. Felt like I was flying recklessly at times. I ran out on the road through much of the section from Nishi-Azabu to Hiroo. It was a choice between dodging pedestrians or letting cars dodge me. And as hard as I ran, I didn't seem to get knocked up -- it was like I could run forever. A really nice feeling. And then there were stops for road crossings and slow downs when the pedestrians got too thick on the ground, so it was more like a fartlek run than anything else. Overall I clocked up the 8.4 km (or so) in an average of 4:34, so with the slower sections and pedestrian overpass thrown in, I must have been going at well under 4:20 pace at times. yippee-ai-oh-kay-ay... a lot of fun and I hope to do that again some day soon.

So then it was time to back up this morning with the run to work. I didn't feel anywhere near as energized as last night, understandably. So I ran along at a steady old pace, probably around 5:00/km or a little slower. I ran to Gaien with thoughts of some kind of speedwork in mind. Part of me wanted to run some intervals, but basically I didn't feel up for it. But I took a breather at the start line for a minute or so and then took off. The first 400 came up in 1:36, similar to the Wednesday night time trial, but felt harder, the 1k came up in 3:58, but felt really hard. So, I was going somewhat slower than 1k or 1200-m interval pace, but it was feeling hard, I decided to hold the pace and run through the entire lap (1325 m) and see what happened. Held the 3:58 pace for that lap, but then the second lap I wilted a bit and ran it in an average of 4:03/k. This was the toughest part -- only a bit over 2-km and fading? Should I give it away? I started to get tummy pains here too, so it was really tempting to stop, but I kept going into the third lap thinking that if the fade continued I would call it quits. Luckily it didn't and I even started feeling a bit better (though the tummy pains were not going away). Knocked that over in 4:02/km pace, so in for a penny in for a pound I kept going. The knowledge that this was definitely the last lap meant I could dig a bit deeper and I then ran that fourth lap in exactly the same time as the first. Nice.  It was then a slow jog the rest of the way to work with a pit stop along the way at the first public convenience, which I found none too soon I can tell you.

All up I am very happy with these two runs. Even though I am a ways off where I wanted to be, it feels better than where I was even a few days ago. The leg isn't exactly right, but it seems to be troubling me a bit less. Let's hope that trend continues.