Wednesday night in the park

So, with the decision to run Ome made, and the back finally settling down, I decided that for last night's workout it would be a good idea to get in an aerobic endurance run. Mika was planning 12 km at 4:25/km, which sounded about right for me. The 400-m running track is under repair, so the whole Wednesday night workout crowd descended upon the sento and Yoyogi Park. It was a very pleasant 12 degrees or so, too. Spring is not far away now.

After a couple of km warmup, a decent sized group toed the line for the pace run while other groups went off to do intervals or hill workouts. We stuck together for the first three laps (1.95 km per lap), but then a water stop split us up into three groups: those that stopped, those that didn't stop, and me (I stopped but at a different fountain so got caught between the two groups). As usual there were some people tending to run a little too fast or uneven pace. My attitude is to try and ignore others in runs like this and find the pace I am after and stick with it. What I managed to achieve was even paced laps of average paces as follows: 4:24, 4:22, 4:22, 4:24, 4:27, and 4:23. With warm up and cool down the total distance covered was about 16 km.

After the water fountain stop I was running mainly on my own until the Greater Perrinville Athletic Association caught up and ran with me. That was nice of him and we had a good chat.

Unfortunately the upper rear left leg pain is hanging around. I've definitely got to see somebody about this back/hip/leg problem. After Ome, after Ome.