More Training

I got my 70 in last week. I had to run .06 Saturday night because i found I was short of 70 after my morning run on Saturday. It is a little obsessive I admit but you have to be obsessive to get out the door every day when you are exhausted.
Sunday I had a good long run, 15 miles. Five miles to the river, 2.5 out and back along the Kizu river and five miles home. It was quite windy so I was going through allergy hell for a couple of hours after the run.
Tuesday night - intervals. Goal 3 x 1 mile at 6:20. The first rep I was on pace at 3/4 and pushed on the last lap to hit my goal. I ended up running 6:13. The same thing happened on the 2nd 6:13. I was feeling good and hadn't run under 6 for a mile in years so I decided to give it a try.
400, 90...800, 3:00. 1200- 4:30 and "kicked" it in for a 5:56. Not amazing but satisfying. It is a good step toward my goals.

Bosozoku

This past Saturday night we were woken up by Bosozoku. Bosozoku are young motorcyle gang members. Literally Bosozuku literally means "Speed Tribes" There are many young Japanese who don't fit into traditional Japanese society. One of these groups of outsiders ride around the highways of Japan, with mufferless obnoxiously loud vehicles.

If you want to hear what we hear every Saturday night go the the link below.

http://www.bosozoku.de/

track workouts

This week in running has gone fairly well. It is Thurday and I have 52 miles in five days which is on pace for 70. I did track work yesterday 4 x 1200 with a goal of 4:45 which is race pace. I ran 4:45, 45, 40, 40. Of course this is not fast but it was my goal so I am satisfied. I am just trying to run smart and think of long term goals. Tomorrow I am supposed to run 6 x 1000 at 4:10 pace. Running on the track always makes me nervous. I am not sure exactly why, part of it is I question whether I can hit the goal times. The other part is I know it will be painful and it will take a lot of effort. It is easy to just jog around and add up the miles but running on the track takes mental effort and the willingness to put yourself in some pain. Another difficult aspect of running on the track these days is getting used to running slower times than I used to and comparing myself to my youth. I suppose that is unavoidable. I just try to remind myself of my goals and think long term. Eventually I am sure the track times will come down.
On a different subject... I am so lucky to live here. There are miles of trails and country road just out my door and an all weather track five minutes from my apartment. I have switched my track days to Wednesday, Friday because the track team is up there on those days. It is much easier to run hard workouts on the track when I am not alone. I don't think that they mind me using the track at the same time they are, though the interactions with them are kind of unusual. I used to greet the track team members when I saw them on the track, but the reactions were so mixed ranging from laughter to ignoring me to the occasional reciprocal greeting, that I have decided to let them initiate. But anyway they don't seem to mind and I appreciate the company.
Today Thurday I ran three this morning with Loran. Usually we run the same 3 mile loop together and when we get back I add on another 1 or 2. But today I was quite tired because of yesterday so I just did the 3 loop. After school i ran a 6.7 loop up through the tunnel and to the "rock". It was incredibly slow. I was crawling but I did it and got 9.7 for the day. With this increase in mileage a lot of my miles are so slow. I hope naturally they get faster as i get fitter.

Sunday Run

So far so good. I got 68 miles in this week. It's my second week in a row over 60. I feel like I am training seriously again and it feels good. Today I went for the traditional long run and did a slow 16. I was trying out a new course so as it is with new courses, it was a bit slower than usual. There was a lot of uncertainty and backtracking as I had to decide which way to go many times. The route was up the hill to Kurondo Ike, ike means lake. At the lake I studied the map of the area and asked a few guys for directions. From the lake I decided to cut through the woods on the Kurondo ike hiking course to get to the main highway. The trails were quite slow because at times I was running over over slippery rocks and up and down stairways. I eventually made it out of the woods and hit the main highway. Basically I followed the highway up and over some big hills and looped home. On the final leg down the farmers road I ran into a couple of farmers who had driven their truck partly off the road. It was about to go over the cliff so they were working hard to lift it back onto the road. I say lift it because as with many things in Japan the truck was quite small. So I stopped for a bit to help them get their truck back on the road and then headed home for a long drink of cold water and a great breakfast with Loran.

mileage

Running is going fairly well these days. I got about 62 miles in last week and I am on pace for about 70 this week. I went 15 last Sunday which is the longest I have gone in a while. It is kind of exciting to be training seriously again. It really has been such a long time since I put any serious mileage in. I am not sure why. I guess I always knew that mileage was the secret for me to go to a higher level. When I made my first breakthrough from 36:20 10 K to a 34 min 10 K it was because of a summer of 70 mile weeks. I eventually got down to 32's because of many 80-100 mile weeks. After I finished running seriously in the 80's I never really approached that kind of mileage again. Of course it isn't particularly easy to consistently run "higher" mileage. The difficult part is not getting injured. The higher the mileage the greater the chance of breaking down, of straining a muscle, getting a stress fracture or many other of many possible running injuries. My strategy is to run all my non-speedwork workouts quite slowly. Actually it isn't really my choice. I am so exhausted because of running as much as I am, that my runs are naturally slow. Anyway, so far so good. If I can put 10 weeks of 70 mpw I will be in pretty good shape I think.

immigrants

Today was kind of a difficult teaching day. My Reading and Writing classes were fine but my Developmental Writing class was a bit difficult. In general Japanese students will not answer open questions to the class. For example, if I say ask, can anyone name a city in Japan, (I know stupid question), no one will volunteer an answer. If I want them to tell me the answer I have to have them talk about it in pairs and then I have them report on their partner's answer. They don't want to stand out, they don't want to seem like a brown noser so they won't answer, no matter how simple the question is. But there are some times when I am just trying to elicit something from them to start an activity and I don't want to go through the longer process of going through pairs etc.. Anyway I was asking the class a couple of questions and predictably they gave me nothing. Of course it is not surprising but at times it is very irritating. These are all students who profess to wanting to be interpreters, English teachers etc. I also had a couple of your ladies giving me attitude which I also found a bit trying. I must remember they are teenagers and young teenagers at that.
My other fun experience today was a conversation with a student after class. I have talked to this young guy several times after class before. He is kind of an eager kid, he seems like he really wants to learn and he will be going to Colorado to study next semester. So he started talking about how the birthrate is really going down in Japan. I asked him if he thought this was a good thing or a bad thing. He said it was bad because Japan will need more immigrants and that is a bad thing. I asked why and he said it is because Japan will become more dangerous and it will lose its culture. I suggested that immigrants might bring some good thing s to a country. He didn't seem convinced. I said that the immigrants are doing many of the 3 d jobs in Japan, dangerous, difficult and dirty. If the immigrants leave, Japanese will have to do these jobs themselves. I also suggested that of course Japan could close themselves off but then Japanese also shouldn't be able to immigrate to other countries. They can't have the best of both worlds. He didn't understand this logic.
He said that immigrants are bad for the economy. I asked how and he said the English teachers he knew at language schools save their money and send it home and then they go home. I guess to make a long story short it is painful to hear from the students that you are trying to help that there are too many of you, foreigners, in Japan and that is hurting the country. Honestly that is a pretty common idea here. Most Japanese think there are too many foreigners in Japan. In Japan 1% of the population are foreigners. About 50% are Koreans who might have been here for generations. The second largest group is Chinese and Americans are about 1% of the foreigner population. Japanese attitudes towards foreigners is something I am well aware of but I choose to ignore because it is an unchangeable fact of life of living here. But every once in a while I am in a situation where I can't ignore it.

Attached is an article with some similar information.


http://www.davidappleyard.com/japan/jp42.htm

Golden Week

This past week was Golden Week in Japan. Golden week is a week of several holidays that fall in the same week. Most Japanese get most of the week off. We got Wednesday through Sunday off this past week. It was a nice break before the long stretch till summer vacation. Actually we have only had three weeks of school so far but vacation is always a good thing no matter when it happens. Anyway we had planned to go to Nagano, the site of the winter Olympics. I made online reservations for a hotel but at the last minute the online service cancelled so we didn't have a place to stay. I went to the travel agency in the school in hope of getting help finding a hotel. She spent a couple of hours looking and couldn't find anything. Of course it was a day before vacation so I am sure most things were booked. From previous expereince I know that basically Japanese all go to the same places on vacation. I surmised that most Japanese would be at the popular places and the other places would be empty. I asked the agent where Japanese weren't going and of course she looked at me like I was crazy.. I told her we wanted to go to some small town that was out of the way and had something interesting to see. She had no clue where to direct me so I thanked her, apologized for wasting her time and proceeded to find a place on my own. I went to my faithful "Lonely Planets Guide to Japan" and found a town about halfway between here and Hiroshima called Okayama. It is famous for having one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan and is the home of the "Peach boy -Momotaro" a famous legendary character. It is also known for the black castle pictured above. On Wednesday morning we left Nagao, the closest station to home and started a 4 hour trip to our destination. We decided to take the local trains, not the bullet train, because we wanted to actually see where we were going, not see it as a blur out the window. We were expecting to stand for a great portion of the trip but actually got a seat relatively soon and had a pleasant trip to our destination with a short stop in Himeji for lunch.
When we arrived in Okayama we went to a hotel we found in the guide book, The Washington Hotel, asked if they had any rooms, they did, and took a short nap. Okayama is a very pleasant, liveable city. It made me a bit envious. We live so far out in the country that going to Starbucks is a journey. It would be nice to live downton where you could eat out, go shopping etc without a trip. After visiting the Korakuen garden we searched for a place to eat and after a long search we went to a chain restaurant, The Asian Kitchen.
The next day we visited Kurashiki, a neighboring city which is famous for its old town. We watched part of a sword demonstration. I was not a good foreigner because when they asked me to participate in the demonstration with the local children I declined. I didn't want the children to praactice on me. When you go to these kinds of events, you will often be asked to participate as the represetative foreigner. When I was young and genki (energetic, gullible) I often said yes. This led to such awkward events like me attempting traditional dance in front of a thousand students, me singing "Let it be" in front of the entire student body and other events that are hard to forget no matter how hard I try.
After visiting Kurashiki we made the trip back home with a short stop in Amagasaki for lunch and shopping.
The lesson I learned from this trip are that you can travel in the popular travel times as long as you don't go to the same place that Japanese go. I heard from friends that parks in Kyoto were incredibly crowded as were other popular destinations. So I guess the secret of travelling in Japan is Go where they ain't.

Slow!!

I went for a long run today, 2:17, 12 and a half miles. I know it is incredibly slow. It is kind of shocking to me how slow I am running these days. It doesn't feel slow but it surely is. I am pushing the pace. I don't feel like I am jogging. Oh well, hopefully it will get better with time. As I said before the GPS watch is making me face reality and run the distances I am supposed to be running. That is one thing I like about running. It is very objective.. a mile is a mile everywhere. A minute is the same in every time zone. There is no faking it. Anyway training the past week or so has been going well. Last week I did 6 x 1K at 4:10. It felt like work so I guess that is a good thing. I need to be consistent in getting in both of the speed workouts I have scheduled each week. The last several weeks I have just gotten one in. Hopefully this will be a good training week