20k in the hot, hot sun

Well, a lot of it was under cover, and the humidity was mercifully low, but we had a lovely 20k today on a different route to our normal Sunday loops around Yoyogi Park. In temperatures that ranged from 24 at the start to 28 at the finish, about eight of us set out from Hatagaya Station at 8:35 am, ran along the Kandagawa (a "tamed" river) and then to Inokashira Park at Kichijoi, then back towards our starting point along the Tamagawa Josui, a heritage canal built to irrigate the rice paddies of the Tokyo granary some 250 years or more ago. Some of us cut off a few boring km along a major road by jumping on a train, but about half the group completed the full 24 km. After a lightning shower in a sports centre we repaired to a 1000 yen ($10) all you could eat buffet of quite good Indian/Thai dishes. Hmm...

In response to comments on the last post: firstly, thank you all for the kind words. I'll play diplomat between Robert Song and Ewen by saying that it was both. Yes, the residual base from marathon training was very important for endurance while red-lining. But there is no doubt that for that extra bit of fizz on my 5k time I desperately needed the VO2max topping up and mechanical strengthening, form, and leg-turnover provided by the quality interval and tempo sessions included over the last four weeks. Reading Mikes blog and his Mystery Coach's comments over the last several months I have become more wedded to this notion of periodicity in training, especially in the form that the Lydiard system espouses. Weeks of running base mileage, weeks of hills, weeks of sharpening up -- all designed to have you at the best you can be on race day. I also think a few weeks here and there of putting emphasis on speed workouts can also be helpful in making faster aerobic paces more manageable during base building. I haven't really invested the time I should into taking on a full-on Lydiard system, but I am getting a lot from Mike's blog and other sources and will continue to learn and apply what I can. Eric, whose comment I really appreciated, also just ran a sensational debut marathon in Fargo. I strongly recommend you pop into his place and read his riveting report (that alliteration just popped out there, sorry).

One last thing: Ewen, htf are you getting hold of Fat Tire in Canberra? Did you have a friend bring it in from Colorado? Or is it really travelling that far. I've never tried it myself. One day. But then, you've never tried Baird's Spring Bock. So nyeh nyeh! :-) I'd also be happy if you'd go out and drink lots of my friend Mr. C. Zierholz's marvelous libations. Here's to beer!

F@#K me! A PB!!

Well , there I was thinking that maybe all my PBs were behind me. After a nice couple of weeks of solid but not over the top training, I was starting to feel like maybe I was coming into some reasonable condition. The set of 1200s the other night was certainly encouraging. I also decided to not back off too much this week. I ran 10k home from work on Thursday night and 8k easy back to work on Friday morning.

So today was the company ekiden around the palace, regarded as 4.96 km by purists, but called 5 km by most people. I was hoping to go sub 18:10, and in my wildest dreams, maybe sneak under 18:00.

I ran the first leg and wasn't sure whether other teams would also put their faster guys first, which is in fact the conventional tactic in ekidens. We got off to a fast start and after a couple hundred meters I soon settled into third place. Stayed like this for the first couple of km until the uphill from Takebashi when the 2nd place guy immediately ran out of steam. First place was a good 10 or 15 seconds further ahead (yes, Mr bloody Nakagawa!).

But somebody else was on my tail all the way up the hill. I could hear his number card flapping in the wind. He stayed there across the flat in front of the British Embassy. I worked pretty hard through this section and this guy probably benefited from some drafting. But if I'd backed off to dice with him, it would have meant giving up all hope of chasing down first place, so I pressed on. Around Hanzomon the third place guy made his move and went ahead and opened a 4 or 5 second gap. Try as I might, I could not pull him back in. Maybe I was mentally weak here and hoped he would fade rather than attack to my absolute physical limit.

Mr Nakagawa was unthreatened up front. And that's how we finished. I was spent at the end and didn't really feel that there was much more I could have done. My time was a quite unbelievable 17:47. Considering it was a 20 second course PB over last year's race I am actually extremely happy with the result. Have to be. But running such a narrow third in a competitive race took some of the edge off my euphoria, but overall made it a far more enjoyable experience.

It was hot too, about 24 degrees and a stiff little wind in our face at the top of the course. Actually, on any objective analysis, there is no getting away from the fact that this was my best 5k run ever.

Our finishing order also ended up being the placings in the individual times contest, so I brought home 7000 yen worth of shopping coupons for the wife and kids. Not something to sneeze at. Or so you'd think, but in fact my right nostril has been irritated and dripping and making me sneeze ever since the race.

Celebrated over a couple of beers at a German festival in Hibiya park. They tasted GOOD!

5 x 1200

Well, the Wednesday track workout went pretty well last night. After a 6.5 km warmup, the prescribed dosage of pain was administered in the form of five lots of 1200 m on a cycle of 7 minutes between each repeat and with a 200 m jog recovery. My times were 4:24, 4:18, 4:18, 4:23, 4:13. I definitely gave it a bit of a kick in the guts on the last one and imagined myself running hard the last part of the 5k (ekiden leg) on this coming Saturday. Now to see how it goes. I think I've got a bit of a response from the last couple of weeks of harder efforts, so it should be a solid run, but no matter how hard I go, I don't think it will be spectacular.

Plu: no I haven't been following Andrew Bartlett's blog (or any Aussie political blogs to be honest), but I checked it out yesterday. Thanks for the tip. Good stuff. Got him on Bloglines now.

Just an Average Joe

I just read something that has inspired me to make a rare political post. Apparently Joe Hockey, Australia's federal Minister for Workplace Relations, believes he is doing poorly in polls compared to his opposite number Julia Gillard because he is "not as pretty as her".

Holy smokes, when will these troglodytes get it? He is trying to diminish her for being a woman. Pure and simple. Nice one Joe. Crikey, if there was even a grain of truth in his logic, why weren't Kerry Chikarovski or Natasha Stott-Despoja as politically successful as they might have been? They were clearly prettier than their adversaries. I wonder if Joe also thinks that Helen Clark only made it into the PM's chair in NZ because she looks like she might be a good root (don't answer that ...), or is he suggesting that ALL half-attractive women are succesful beyond merit because of their looks? I mean, really, what message does he want to send to the women of Australia with a statement like this? Poor old Joe. To think he used to be my local member.

And the most delicious irony is that he said it after "addressing a conference on advancing the position of women in the workplace". Ha ha ha ha !! I wonder what he told them ... ten top tricks with foundation and lippy? How to make it to the top with just two simple implants?

OK, back to running next time, but this just tickled me so much I had to write about it.

An upper aerobic run & some blogger fun

I had yesterday off as two hard efforts in two days had left me feeling a little tired and leg weary. Better to recover I thought and run quality the next day rather than two junk runs. So got up early this morning and out for 12 km with 4k warm up then the next 8k at heart rate in the high 140s peaking at times in teh low 150s. Overall average HR for the run was 141 and the time 54 minutes.

And since someone is always trying something new with their blogs, here is a slideshow generated from Picasa Web Albums. The photos have nothing to do with running ... in fact they were taken by my brother and his wife when they visited Japan a couple of years ago ... hope he doesn't mind them getting a global audience here:


Hmmm... that seemed to work OK, though it is probably necessary to follow the link to the album to see the photos in all their full pixelated glory.

Quick Hupdate

Well, the company ekiden is just a week and a half away now. This involves a 5-k lap around the palace and the prospect of a top three finish for individual times for me. First prize is 10,000 yen (about A$100) in shopping vouchers, 2nd place is 5,000 yen worth. Three years ago I got first, but the last two years Mr Nakagawa has beaten me into 2nd place. I have been a bit late getting my ass into gear, but finally the last couple of weeks I have been gradually getting more motivated towards improving my condition for this race. I racked up 85 km two weeks ago and 75 km last week. A few lactate threshold and VO2 max workouts thrown in for good measure, but perhaps not enough upper aerobic miles. It is probably too little, too late I suspect. Last year Nakagawa-san ran more than 10 seconds faster than 18 minutes. So I have to get down into the low 18s to be even in with a remote chance (I have no idea of his relative change since last year).

I had an easy 10 km run yesterday morning, and then in the evening got out for a training run on the actual ekiden course with my team. We ran our own paces so I decided to give it a blat and see what I could come up with. What I came up with was 18:54. I don't know whether that's good or bad. It isn't a bad time for a training run, but then again, I pretty much kicked it in the guts. I'm not sure I can find another 50 seconds or a minute in there!

Anyway, with fatigued legs I did a 6k warmup in good company this evening before joining the Namban ladder intervals workout: 600 m, 800 m, 1000 m, 1200 m, 1000 m, 800 m, 600 m. My times were as follows: 2:07, 2:49, 3:35, 4:18, 3:35, 2:50, 2:00 ... not too bad at all really, especially hitting so close to the same times on the way back down as on the way up. That seven second improvement on the 2nd 600 was also encouraging. I did push very hard on the last one and was happy with the result. My left knee, groin and achilles are all complaining about it now though :-(

Hello!

Nothing too exciting going on, but at least I have an iota more motivation and energy this week ... just enough in fact to pop up this mid-week post.

That hamstring strain I mentioned that I picked up during the TELL 10k race was real enough, but not too serious. Rather than run on Tuesday morning I swam about 1500 m, the first as general laps and the next 500 as five repeats of 100 m at hard effort with a couple minutes rest. I got out for a run in the afternon with a work colleague, Ms. Uchida. Our company's annual ekiden taikai is coming up in a couple of weekends time. For training we do a lap of the Imperial Palace (5k) and I try to encourage her to run at a challenging, but not debilitating pace. The week before last she did it in 27:11, last night she brought it home in 26:51. Without a lot of other training in between, that represents decent improvement. For me it was just a nice relaxing leg turnover effort and showed that the hamstring was not too bad, but I'd still need to be careful with it this week.

Last night was the regular interval workout at the track. With the lovely, balmy late spring weather there was a big turnout. Club leader Bob decided we would do Yasso 800s -- a set of 10 x 800 m run in the same number of minutes & seconds as target marathon time in hours & minutes with a 400 m jog between repeats. I was not too keen on this workout, but the niggle meant that whatever we did I was going to have to back off the intensity anyway, so I joined a 3:15 group, and because of time constraints we only did eight. All repeats were pretty close to the mark. Here are our times, dropping off the "3:" minutes: 17.0, 14.8, 17.5, 14.8, 13.3, 14.6, 13.6, 15.0. Did you notice that last one? It took us eight tries, but we finally did one in 3:15.0!

I plan to run home tonight and back to work again tomorrow morning. If I have a decent run on Saturday and Sunday as well, that will get me close to another 70 or 80 km week. I guess that's a reasonable enough base mode to be in.

Inagi, TELL

Creeeeeaaak. That's the sound of the blog being opened. I'm still not all that upbeat and excited about my running at present, but I guess I have a little to report with two race efforts and logging 85-km for the past week. The races were Inagi Ekiden, a low-key affair (3 km per person), last Monday and the TELL charity race (I did the 10 km) yesterday (Saturday 5/5).

Last year my team won the Inagi ekiden mens masters category. This year we didn't have quite the same talent in the team. My 11:26 was a few seconds slower than last year. Everyone busted their balls, but we just weren't in the hunt for the prizes unfortunately. One thing that caught my eye was that Mr Keren Tryhard recorded a time only a few seconds slower than me. He has been gradually gnawing away at the difference between us over the past year, especially on the back of his herculean ironman training -- and that difference was once quite substantial. He is strong on hills and Inagi had a vicious little hill near the end. Still, the world was in it's natural order because, marginal though it was, my time was faster.

Well, that natural order came crashing down at the TELL (Tokyo English Lifeline) race yesterday. This photo tells the story Keren (black Namban singlet with yellow writing) ahead, me 20 m or so back in the shadow (both figuratively and literally in this instance).

I started the race 10 or 15 m adrift of Nambanners Keren, Stuart and Christian (the young Swiss guy I met at the start at the Shinjuku Half Marathon -- he has now become a regular Namban member). We all started too fast and the conditions were very warm ... perhaps 25 degrees. I can't remember if it was the first or second lap, but Stuart eventually faded more than I did and I passed him. I had Keren in sight the whole way, but sometimes the gap was pretty large. I worked really hard on the last couple of km, despite the pace getting more and more ugly. On the final hill I pulled back 10 or 15 m or so and may have been reeling him in until he heard someone call my name and that spurred him on to stay 20 or 30 m ahead to the finish. I suppose every dog has to have his day (the bastard!). No, just joking. We are mates and he thoroughly deserved his victory. I'm not sure exactly how many seconds ahead he was, but I ran a 39:24, which given my current condition I was pretty happy with. I think I strained my left hamstring though. Christian powered away to record a low 38 minute time. He has a lot of improvement left in him too, that boy.

After the race I went to an awesome homebrew party out in Chiba, but somehow managed to not get too under the weather. But I was afflicted enough that it was still a slow start to the day and I did not make it to Yoyogi Park. But once the fog lifted a bit I managed to get out for a steady 21 km to round out a reasonably solid 85k week.

New On-line Running Log

I started using an on-line log called Breaking the Tape. It has the advantage of being able to generate scripts to show various kinds of summaries of your accumulated data. An example of which is shown over there in the side bar. Does multi-sport workouts too, so might interest the triathletes.

My one point of discontent is that I emailed the owners to find out if there was a way of importing all my old data from Excel, after appropriate layout formatting of course, and so far haven't heard anything.

Edit: I wasn't sure if it would work, but I dropped some of the script (a script for generating a summary of the last three workouts) directly into the body of a post. It didn't work in preview mode, but did work after publishing ... as you can see below. Nice.

Edit: But having trouble customising the script ... caveat emptor

A 5k time trial

Considering how little I have been running since Arakawa Marathon (March 18) I think I did alright to record a 18:43 for the 5k time trial on Wednesday evening. But then again, it is the first time trial I have done in a long time, so I can't really gauge how good or bad it was compared to recent performances. I guess the most telling thing is that it is a fair way off my low 18:00 best form. But I can't even regard myself as in training for anything at the moment, so it was really just a state of the nation assessment. The weather is about to start warming up, so soon all heart rate and pace assessments are going to be shot to pieces anyway.

Also ran about 10 km on Tuesday morning and 11.5 km yesterday afternoon, mostly slow, but 5k at upper aerobic pace. I'm resting today. We have a long weekend coming up with Inagi Ekiden, only 3-km legs, on Monday. More of a social day out with the Namban gang than anything else. Though I was in the winning masters team last year, for which we received a nice bright-red Saucony long-sleeve top. We do not have quite the same class of team this year, but we will give it a shot.

Bass Instincts

After running yesterday, I did what my friend Gareth describes as a "Good Thing".

My son Kohta joined the (electric) guitar club at school some two or three months ago. He had to fight us a bit for the permission because he is already in the brass band club, and there is only so much a kid can fit into one life. One problem was he didn't have a guitar, nor any experience playing one, nor a parent that knows the first thing about it. The other kids in the club (all three of them) declared that what they really needed was a bass player. So Kohta was volunteered for that role. And he was keen. But unfortunately he didn't have a bass. Nor did he have especially sympathetic parents. We were a bit worried about several things: a) Would it just be a passing fancy? b) Would he be able to practice without disturbing the neighbours? c) Who would teach him? (the guitar club had no teacher) d) Wouldn't this cost us a fortune?

He located a second hand bass in a nearby trash and treasure. It was only 5000 yen (A$60?). Hmm, pretty cheap. But we were still not convinced due to reservations about quality of a 2nd hand machine and that he would still need an amp, strap, case, etc, none of which we knew much about. So we let it go, days went by, then weeks, and weeks turned into a couple of months. Still he kept raising the topic. I have been feeling symathetic to his cause for a few weeks, having been convinced of the strength of his motivation, and so we managed to convince the financial controller that we should invest a modest amount to give him the chance to try it. But still there were questions....

Then two things happened. Firstly, he told me a couple of days ago that the new headmaster has his own band and is going to teach the guitar club...AND, he can play/teach bass. That was one big obstacle out of the way...at least he would have every opportunity to learn, and it would be entirely up to him. The one remaining obstacle was the complete state of ignorance on the part of his parents when it comes to all things musical. And that was where Gareth came to the rescue. He has been learning electric guitar for the past couple of years, his 50th birthday present to himself. To cut the story short, he emailed me after the run yesterday to point me towards Rock Inn, a guitar shop in Shinjuku that sold starter bass sets for 20,000 yen (a bit over A$200). He then very kindly met us there later in the afternoon. And to cut this rapidly lengthening story even shorter, we ended up getting a slightly more up-market starter set for 25,000 yen: an Ibanez GSR320. It is a pretty nice machine (picture shows actual colour), and since that price includes a 10 watt amp, bag, strap, leads, tuner and assorted other bits and pieces, it felt like a bargain. It was one of those shopping experiences that really made you feel good. It certainly made Kohta happy and it was fun watching him pop the study DVD he bought into the player and get stuck into the practice as soon as we got home.

Could this be the beginning of the career of the first musical Lacey in existence?

A low-key week

I had a very funny old week of running last week. Or more to the point, very little running. Only Wednesday night and Sunday (today). But I managed close on 25k today.The lack of running on other days was de to a combination of low motivation, yuck weather, and feeling a little bit off-colour, esecially on Friday. I also squeezed in a swim on Tuesday night. So I suppose it wasnt all sloth.

One bit of good news is that I was able to patch back together most of my missing running data from a couple of different sources. I've lost some of the details, like 1-km splits from Arakawa and Tokyo, but I have the total distances and times of all runs, so at least my monthly and annual tallies are still in-tact. No luck with the device though, so that's a few passwords down the drain.

I hope to run a bit more often this week, so we shall see.

Grumble bum

Starting with the most important thing first: Good luck to everybody running marathons this week!! Scott and Yoshida-san in Nagano; Don, Satohi, Leng Leng, and Aya and Keith in Boston; Tesso, P Allen and a swag of other Aussies in Canberra, and I think there may be a wee preggers Scottish lass running a 10k in Canberra as well. And what is that bloody Clairie doing? The other preggers runner? Is she running something in Canberra? Cheer-squading? I dunno what, but I'm sure she'll be putting a smile on somebody's face, just like she did the other day.

Things have been pretty busy for me of late. Had a fair bit of work on and been taking on too many extra-curricular activities, not necessarily running related. Hence the low activity on Bloggus variegatus, as a certain half-pint harrier decided to remind me last night.

Running itself has been bumping along. I have not been forcing my training at all. I had a 17 km week followed by a 60 km week followed by a 49 km week...no runs longer than 10 to 12 km until last Sunday, when I ran 22 km with Satohi and Rie as Satohi's last major run before Boston. Wednesday week ago I ran a 6 x 1000 m interval workout with the Horde. Coughed and spluttered to a 3:49 on the first rep, then settled into a more business-like set ranging from 3:39 for no. 2 down to 3:31 for no. 6, but the rest around 3:35 to 3:36. I was pretty happy with that actually. Then last night we did the Namban mile (5:52 min for me) followed by a couple of 800s (2:52 and 2:49). After a little break we then (and this was my idea) ran four laps by jogging the curves and sprinting the straights. It was a good workout and quite a few people enjoyed the variation.

The grumble-bum title refers to two things mainly. 1) I have been hoping that the lower key approach to running would see the niggles in my left leg clear up. They haven't. I guess they are not as bad as they were, but it appears that nothing short of complete rest for God knows how long would fix them up. And since they don't really bother me that much, other than to act as a throttle on how hard I can train, I really don't want to stop cold turkey. So then it becomes a mental battle between just carrying on at a low-key level (and hoping they continue to improve) and actually ramping up a bit with a view to a couple of upcoming shorter races. Maybe I just have to push aside silly human pride and maintain the low-volume, low-intensity training and take poorer results in the races. But I certainly wasn't thinking that when I went out and ran 12 km at around 4:15-4:20/km pace tonight. Which brings me to grumble bum reason number 2) ...new paragraph needed...

Yesterday afternoon just before I went to the track I finished editing a 20-page scientific paper. I'd been working on it on my Creative MuVo TX FM, using it as a thumb drive. Not backing it up of course, I'm f$%%ing hopeless like that. When will I learn? Oh, I am foreshadowing what happened next. Yes, when I went to do a final read-through and send it to the client this morning, bloody device would not connect. The computer was saying "Device not formatted, shall we format it now?" NO!! Bastard, don't do that! Tried another computer, same. Checked the mfr forum on the Internet ... oh crap, there is no way around it except to re-format the device and reload firmware, which wipes all the data. So I spent the day completely re-editing the paper (and a shit of a paper it was, too). I finally made a slightly extended deadline. Now, you can shrug your shoulders and accept that, but then I remembered that I had been operating my running log off this device for the last couple of months. So I am going to lose a lot of data from that. I have a backup of it from a couple of months ago, but this is still going to muck up all my monthly and yearly tallies and so on. You'd think I'd learn because I lost quite a big chunk of the log when a hard disk crashed 18 months or so ago. Grrr...there were a couple of other things I lost, including a few important Internet banking passwords in my Password manager application. Dumbkopf, dumbkopf! So, that's why I am a grumble bum tonight and had to go for a hard run to try and work out a bit of aggro. Not sure if it worked. The several glasses of amber lager have helped a little though...oh well, life goes on I suppose. But if anybody has any clues as to things I might try to get at the data in my device, please let me know. I have not re-formatted it yet.

The chronicler of the seasons

I have linked to Shoji-san's blog before when he had a set of neat photos up. Well, it's cherry blossom time here, so I guess he must have taken some good pics. Oh yes, so he has! A number of them in our Yoyogi Park.

Struggling

Wow, this is one lazy, unmotivated runner's blog you are looking at right now. I ran a whopping 17 km the week after Arakawa. Somehow I racked up 60 km last week. But none of it had much quality or enthusiasm about it. Just a couple of commutes to and from work, bit of this, bit of that. No long run. And quite a bit of beer drinking in between. Generally I am happy as long as my weight is under 74 kg. This morning I jumped on the scales and it was ...76!! So I am definitely having a bit of a down period. I probably need it. Or that's what I keep telling myself anyway.

Today is Tuesday. I was quite prepared to do my regular early Tuesday run this morning, but a damn deadline got in the way, keeping up until 1:30 in the morning and then had to get up at 7:30 and get straight back on the job to get it done by 10:00. Grrr...

So tonight I went to the gym. My company bought some tickets and I use one every now and then. Having both swim-wear and gym-wear on board I decided as I was walking over there that I would do a "triathlon". So I swam a kilometer in 19 minutes (first time I've swum proper laps in several years, so I was reasonably pleased with that) and then had a slow transition to the "bike" upstairs in the studio. I did 15 km on the spinnie thingie in about 25 minutes. Does that sound right? I think there might have been a bit of extra time and distance cooling down a bit. Then I jumped on a treadmill and did 6 km. Man, those treadmills are weird things. Five minutes per km (12 km/h) feels like some kind of crazy, dangerous speed freak thing ... gunna get thrown off any minute ... but then you realize that the breathing is very comfortable, so, oh yeah, I guess it isn't so fast after all. I ended up getting the thing up to 14 km/h for five or ten minutes and finally 14.5 km/h for the last half a k and then a bit of a cool down. I definitely need to learn how to use the dang things properly.

So, that's my first, and maybe last, triathlon.

I have also been getting a bit behind with blog reading. Generally I am reading, but not finding much time to comment. So apologies me hearties. Bloody Pharyngula keeps backing up ... I can't believe he can churn out 6 to 10 blog posts a day as well as be a high-powered uni professor fighting the good fight. The Chimpanzee Refuge gets the better of me at times too. Bloody Kevin Beck .. should stop haranguing fundies and get out running more ;-) ... plus I've added to me burden by subscribing to half a dozen beer blogs (as well as starting my own, which is stuttering like this one just now). But certainly life is not what I would call empty...

Me & Eric

I have taken things very easily since Arakawa. I recovered very quickly actually and could have run Wednesday, but didn't do anything until an easy 5k on Thursday night. The next run I had was yesterday morning (Saturday). And what a run it was!

My friend Gareth gets massages at Route Vigor, which also boasts as one of its regular customers the Kenyan three-time Olympian (bronze at Atlanta, silver at Sydney & 7th at Athens), Eric Wainaina*. Yesterday they organised a low-key run for a few customers with Eric around the Imperial Palace. Gareth was helping me to pick up a replacement beer fridge yesterday morning, so although I was a non-customer, aka a ring-in or hanger-on, I also went along to join the run with Eric. (* The linked article is a bit old and out of date -- he now works at a training gym and trains mostly at the Imperial Palace).

The crowd was maybe 15-strong with runners of levels ranging from kids to semi-serious social joggers, and then three of us from Namban Rengo. We chatted with Eric a little before the run and found him to be very friendly and personable. When we got underway we found ourselves running along with Eric and chatted continuously as we moved at a very easy pace. A lot of it was small talk and about life and work and living in Japan and so on (he has been here since he was 18 and is now 34). But I also asked him a couple of questions that I am sure will interest some of my readers:
Me: Do you train with a heart rate monitor?
EW: Yes.
Me: Do you ever race with a heart rate monitor?
EW: Yes.
Me: (Surprised) Oh, really, what percent of maximum do you run the first half of a marathon?
EW: 61%
Me: (jaw dragging along the road) 61%?!
EW: Yes.
Gareth: And then you race?
EW: Yes.

Well, I found that staggering, and I am still not 100% certain that he didn't misunderstand my question, but I think it would be hard to mistake it for, "What heart rate do you do your recovery runs at?" Anyway, if true, it made me realise just how supremely conditioned these elite marathoners are, and how much slower I would need to run to be able to run the marathon at a comparative level of effort. (By the way, Eric runs twice a day for a total of about 30 km/day).

After the first lap and waiting for all the Route Vigor runners to come in and be congratulated, Gareth and I had to run back to the top of the course to where the car was parked. Eric was keen for another lap, so joined by another Nambanner, Philippe, who had stumbled upon us, we ran the long way around to accompany Eric to our hop off point. Eric was effortlessly gradually dragging us along at a progressively faster pace. Gareth dropped off the back and I was working pretty hard with my heart rate was up well over 80% of maximum and soon at 161 (87%). Philippe was hanging in there as well, but also doing it hard. I guess we were getting up towards 4:00/km and I was able to gasp out, "So Eric, does this pace still feel like jogging for you?"
"Oh yes." He nonchalently replied. When I train it is more like this, and he shot off like a startled rabbit, yet his form didn't change at all. Just beautiful to watch.

When we stopped to bid farewell, I took consolation from the fact that he had a small bead of perspiration on his temple. I guess the heavy tracksuit he was wearing and mild weather might have contributed to that.

Eric is currently aiming for selection in Kenya's marathon team for the World Championships in Osaka later this year. He had a great performance at Honolulu in December, but has had to miss the upcoming Nagano Marathon due to a niggling knee injury. That would have been his target qualifying race, so now his fate rests with the Kenyan Athletic Federation. And with the depth of running talent coming through, and his age perhaps being against him, selection is far from a certainty. Of course, all of us who met Eric yesterday were so impressed by his generosity and friendliness that we wish him all the very best of luck with selection. I cant wait to see him competing at Osaka and shouting, "Go Eric!!" while turning to whoever is beside me and saying, "That's Eric Wainaina. We train together at the Imperial Palace."

Arakawa Marathon

Arakawa Marathon is a little run of 21.1 km south along the banks of the Ara kawa (river), turn around and run 21.1 km back. It is a very wide open flood plain and if there is ever any wind about, you can be sure you will find it at Arakawa. So it was with some trepidation that I monitored the weather forecast for today starting about six days ago. It first said, fine, cool (1-9 degrees C), and wind of 26 km/h. Yikes, that's strong! About three days ago the wind prediction was for 6 km/h. Yippeee!! But by yesterday it sprang back up to around 20 km/h. Bugger! The whistling around the windows of our apartment last night confirmed that we could look forward to a challenging race.

Well, the one thing the forecast got right was that that it was fine and sunny and cool (if not cold). But for large sections of the course the wind was more like 30 km/h. It was behind us for the first 21.1 km and in our face for the second. After I turned around I thought about that Eric Bogle song as I felt like it was trying to blow me right back to Australia.

In the end I was happy with my race. I ran pretty much to plan and didn't let myself go too fast when the wind was at my back. Although I was going to run 4:20+ in the first half, the tailwind made it very easy to just cruise along at 4:15-4:20/km. So that's what I did, and resisted all temptations to "try and pick up a few minutes". I consciously decided to try and hold something in reserve to deal with the wind. And that seemed to pay off to some extent. After the turn, on tiring legs, I slowed of course, and my legs fatigued just as much as in faster marathons, but I managed to hold a pace of under 4:40, and many splits of under 4:30, until 33 km. Then it was more like 4:4o to 4:50 for most of the next 9 km. I felt quite calm and accepting of this and was actually feeling reasonably strong. I thought that without the wind I could have easily been holding sub 4:20/km pace.

In the last 5 km I realized that the only realistic goal was to come in with a net time under 3:10. I should add the wind had dropped off a bit by this time, but of course it had done a job on the legs by then. I was still happy enough with the way I was moving, though, and was passing heaps of people and rarely getting passed.

At the one km to go marker my watch said 3:05:34...I'd have to run a 4:26 or better final km to get under 3:10. Since I'd been moving along at about 4:50/km at that stage, I almost gave it up as lost, but quickly decided, well, it is not really out of the question. It is just like running one hard interval on the track, dig in and see what you can do. So dig in I did and gradually fought through my leg pain to get some form back and pull out a 4:28 for the last km and 4:05 per km for the last 200 m to squeeze out a 3:09:54 (net time, net time!). Cheer squad Jaynie at the end said I looked like I was really strong in that last couple hundred meters. Little did she know I was a shot duck! I really paid later for that hard finish too, with lots and lots of cramping in my calves and feet.

Despite it being my slowest marathon in seven outings, net or gross, I am actually quite happy with the result under the conditions.

Satohi went extremely well. She has set very high goals for herself and finds it dificult to feel satisfied when she doesn't meet them. This marathon she would have really liked to have gone under 3:20 and has ultimate designs on a 3:15:xx (or better), though her standing PB was about 3:28. Despite the nasty wind, she ran 3:25:xx to lower her PB by 2 minutes. She would have surely run under 3:20 if it hadn't been for the wind. So that's a real shame, but even the fact she PB'd was quite extraordinary under the circumstances (which includes that she has struggled for the last couple of weeks with a sore ankle). Like all of us she suffered into the wind, but fought hard and had far more even splits than the rest of us in the race. Otsukaresama Satohi-san!

Take a deep breath...

...because here we go again!

It doesn't feel like I will be running a marathon in two days time. Where is that "can't get this song out of my head" feeling? I forgot to eat between breakfast and lunch today and was hungry by lunch time. Hardly a very diligent approach to carbo loading.

On Wednesday night I did a few bits and pieces of warming up and joined the Namban track workout. A mile time trial followed by five 800-m intervals. But all at well below maximal effort and I finished feeling quite energized. Rested yesterday. Got up for three laps of my 3.3-km loop from home this morning. I felt a bit slow and stodgy, but by the second lap had the pace up around 4:20/km and did the third lap a little faster again, feeling like I was finally getting into the run just as it was time to finish. But I definitely don't have that feeling of hubristic confidence I had going into Tokyo. Nope. I am determined to run this one at a modest pace of 4:20 to 4:30 for the first 30 km and then hope like buggery I can hold onto it. I am not at all confident that I can. In fact, if Satohi were to ask me to pace her rather than run my own race, I probably would. But for the time being, I will approach it with a view to chalking up a solid if unspectacular time in as even splits as possible. I am actually very curious to know if I can preserve myself enough to have a strong rather than "hanging on for grim death" final 12 km.

See you on the other side folks.

Oh...in case anybody might be interested, I started a new blog to balance this one.

A bit better

So I did the heart rate test again this morning: 4:11/km. That's a few seconds better than the rather unpleasant 4:15/km of last week. I was also having to work the legs a bit harder to get up to a HR of 149, and the average HR was the correct 149, not 150. So I guess I am some way back towards where I was four weeks ago. But at the same time, I am still certainly not there, at least as measured by this test.

I still have no idea what weight to put on this test, but suffice to say that my main challenge to myself for this marathon on Sunday is to NOT entertain thoughts of going sub 3:00, but rather to run a realistic pace in the first half that will feel fairly comfortable and allow me to enjoy the run, but still yield a respectable time if I can hold it throughout. At present, I think that is something around 4:25 to 4:30/km. If I can do that and get to 30k feeling good, there is always a remote chance that I may actually pick up a few minutes in the last 12 km. Probably not, but I really, really want to give myself a chance of negative splitting whilst still running a semi-decent time. Just not sub three!

Great Moments in Running

On Saturday I ran three laps of a 400-m track in about three minutes per lap, yet it gave me every bit as much satisfaction as finishing any marathon. The reason was that I was leading a blind runner in the EMB (Endurance Mind and Body) Race in support of fund-raising for eye operations in developing coutries. But it wasn't just me, nor was it in the slightest little bit about me or my running.

The format was that teams of six would take it in turns to guide a blind runner around the track for 45 minutes. The team that completed the most laps was the winner (though "winning" was the last thought on anybody's mind; I think we all felt like winners just by being there). The blind runner ran the entire 45 minutes and thus served as the team's baton. My team's runner carried the nickname "Big One" for reasons that are obvious from the photo of him and Anna.

The blind runners mostly came from the Achilles Running Club, which is often working out in Yoyogi Park when we do our Sunday runs. So often I have admired the courage of these people, who run despite living in a world of darkness, and the selflessness of their guides. Often I've wanted to help in some way, but never taken the step outside my own cosseted comfort zone to actually do anything, never faced my feeble insecurities like "what do you say to a blind person? Especially one who doesn't speak your language?". I think many of us carry these kinds of mixed desires to help combined with unbridled selfishness and "hangups" that stop us actually doing something. The presence of the Achilles Club in Yoyogi so often made me all too aware of my own.

So, when Fabrizio called for volunteers for Nambanners to form teams for this event, I jumped at the chance. It was really interesting learning how to run with a blind runner (make sure your inside foot is in time with his) and great to confront and overcome the "what-should-I-say-after-I-say-hello" discomfort of engaging in small talk with him and his regular guide, in this case his father, who was jogging along behind.

Our two Namban teams raised enough money to fund 19 eye operations. There are some more photos of the day here.

A highlight was the presence of the half marathon world record holder for blind runners (70 minutes), Henry Wanyoike and his guide, Joseph Kibunja.

They really cruised around the track and it was beautiful to see them in action. Aren't we lucky, that we can actually do that? See, that is. Here is a YouTube clip about Henry. It is amazing watching him drag his illness-weakened guide at the end of the 5000-m at the Sydney Paralympics.