This month's training

Got up at 5:30, out the door at six for a 5.2 mile run. If I leave at that time I can beat the heat and get a decent run in. I did another 5.3 in the afternoon. From this week I hope to increase the miles. I am concentrating on running slow and easy so I can handle the increase. After dinner tonight I went upstairs, filled a garbage can with ice water and iced my legs for about 20 minutes. I want to do this every day at least once.

I got this month's workouts from Tinman. Basically it will be a no-speed month with only strides a few times a week. The basic workouts are 4 x 1 hour, 80 minutes x 2 with 20-30 minutes at marathon pace, and a long run. It will be nice to get off the track a bit because it is brutal to be on the track this time of year because of the heat.

If anybody is reading this and has any questions...I would be glad to answer.

Long Run

It has been so hot and humid recently. The heat can reduce me to a crawl on a five mile run so I decided to get up early for my Sunday long run to beat the heat. Unfortunately I was up late till 12 last night on the phone but managed to get up at 4:00, an hour before my run. I need to get up that much before I run to give my body some time to wake up before I hit the road. I left at five o'clock and ran 15.2 finishing in 2:23. I can tell that I am getting stronger. The pace at which I can run relaxed is much faster than it used to be. My splits were: (thanks to Garmin)

1- 12:40
2 - 10:51 the first two miles are uphill
3 - 9:37
4 - 9:26
5 - 9:01
6 - 9:12
7 - 9:32
8 - 9:14
9 - 8:56
10 - 8:52
11 - 8:36
12 - 10:20
13 - 8:37
14 - 8:47
15 - 8:10
Total 2:23

Average pace 9:27

For me this is a big improvement. I am trying not to push this workout too much, just run it relaxed. So getting up early worked. I beat the heat and was finished before it really started to get hot so I consider it a major success.

First week

This is the first week in the second stage of training. Sunday was good, about 16 but Monday and Tuesday were bad, 6 and 5. Obviously I can't really have too many "off days and still run 70 or 80 miles. Wednesday I did a morning run of 4.75 and then intervals in the afternoon. 3 warm up, a 3 mile tempo run at 7:20 pace and then 8 x 200. It was hard to run exactly 44's, the goal time. I was either too fast or slow. The second to last was 39 so I decided to see how fast I could go for one. I ran 34++. It felt quite good but a little out of control, not very coordinated. I would love to be able to run 30 again. I haven't run that fast in many years but it would be nice to run as fast as I did 20 years ago. I will probably get 60+ in this week. I need to increase dedication and even the length of my easy runs. Next week 70+ for sure.

The compound

I haven't really written much about living in Japan for many reasons, but one of them is that I have lived here so long that everything seems normal to me. But anyway I will try to tackle the subject more often.

Anyway it could be argued that I don't live in Japan. I live in an apartment complex of foreigners, mostly westerners which is situated on the university campus. We don't really have any Japanese neighbors so it is very easy to go for long periods of time without really speaking to any Japanese other than out students or staff at the university.

Of course this is terrrible for my Japanese language skills. When I was teaching high school in Sendai I would hear and speak Japanese every day but now the only time I use it is when I ask directions when I am running, or for one 90 minute period every 6 weeks when I get my haircut. I have to make more of an effort to get out and use the language but it hasn't really happened.

When I got this job and heard this would be the living situation I didn't want to take the job. I knew that when you get a group of people together who are naturally isolated from the main society, Japan, they can be incredibly nasty. The thought of living with the people I work with turned my stomach. Luckily it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. It is pretty easy to live your own life and choose how much you mix or don't. The other teachers here have been quite nice and respectful of other peoples space, so it has been a pleasant surprise.

Vacation is over

I just finished a week of recovery. I ran 38 miles last week to give my body some time to recover and in hope that the sharp pain in my shins would go away. It was a good week to take off because it was the worst week --weather wise -- that I have experienced here. It was pouring all week at torrential strength. Of course I can run in the rain but I must admit it is not my favorite thing to do. Anyway I feel refreshed but the pain in my shins remains. I bought a garbage can from the hardware store to fill with ice water so I can dunk my legs in the ice water after I run. I have read a lot about the value of icing so hopefully it will keep me healthy through the next phase of training.

I had a great long run yesterday. I ran 15 + through the countryside ending up in Shintanabe. It was a great course and I was running faster than usual at the same effort. The last couple miles of my run I was in the high 7's which is pretty good for me. I am definitely feeling stronger.

another 62

62 more miles this week. Obviously training to be a better runner isn't a terribly glamorous thing. 90% of it is by yourself, there is no one applauding you, there are no cheerleaders jumping up and down as you finish your workout. It is just week after week of semi-monotonous training with the hope that it will all pay off. The amazing thing is you could put all that training in and actually not improve. Or you could train like a madman, be at the peak of your fitness and then before the big race get injured and all the training would be for naught. My favorite anology for training (me 2004) is of pouring water into a bucket with a small hole in the bottom. If you pour in a lot of water your fitness increases but it you stop pouring it will all leak away. If you pour in less than is going out you will also lose fitness. So you are always trying to make sure more is going in than is leaking out. That is why I am training at the level I am now. I trained for three years in my 40's and each year in March I ran around 19:50 for 5k. All that work for a 19:50 5k. I was just breaking even in my "fitness bucket" If I am going to train hard I want to see some real improvement.

This week both of my track workouts went well. I did my tempo run on Tuesday but skipped the 200's because of sore shins. I did the 1000/600 workout on Thursday and it felt pretty quick.My shins have been aching quite a bit recently so I have decided to take next week "off" I will just run once a day with no speedwork. Just easy running. I figure the shin problem is either shin splints which is a very common injury or the first signs of a stress fracture. I am hoping it is shin splints which can be cured by icing and rest..

For the past couple of months I have been searching for the perfect long run course. I think I found it this past Sunday. It is about 15 miles, mostly on country roads. I see a lot of bicycle racers on that course so it seems to be a popular route. It is quite beautiful through mountain valleys, traditonal Japanese villages and past rice fields. There are some amazing places to run here. I think that is one of the best things about living in Japan, the scenery and the ordinary things that become extraordinary because they are here.

Another one bites the dust

Another week down. 64 more miles. As I said before, a couple more weeks of 60's then up to the 70-80 range. It was a good week of training. I did a 3 mile tempo on Tuesday with 8x 200 afterwards. The 200's felt great. I love the feeling of acceleration through the curve and then running strong down the straight. It is nice to feel relatively fast. On Wednesday I had an interesting 8 miler. I ran up toward the lake and took a road that I have been curious about for a long time. It led to a development of very expensive-looking houses. There were some log cabin style houses and it looked a bit like the US. At the end of the development there was a trailhead which led to a whole network of trails that are around Lake Kurondo. It is amazing how many trails there are in this area. The only problem is that this time of year the trails tend to grow over and are covered with spider webs all through the summer. My first year here I tried to ignore them but I was coming back from runs with shockingly big red marks all over my body. So I decided to concede the trails to the spiders for the summer and wait for the first big frost to kill them off. Thursday's workout was 1000 at cruise interval pace 200 rest and then a 600 at maximum aerobic pace x 2. It was an interesting workout and the fast part actually felt better than the slow part One of the interesting things about my coach's workouts is that they are at a variety of paces. When I ran in college everything was all out, as fast as you could go for that distance. The workouts I am doing now seem to make much more sense. It has been a great help to work with "Tinman" It makes me accountable and feel like I am not running in a vacuum.

Reflections

Those are the days you look back on 20 years later and wish you could go back to. Memorable people and faces that will stay with you in your memories and that will come back to you in your dreams years later.
When I was 21 and had dreams of becoming a serious runner I started running at Pt. Defiance with a group of older runners. Every Sunday morning a group of 15-20 of the top runners in the Tacoma area would gather in the parking lot in Pt Defiance park to rip through 3 loops of the hilly 5 mile trail circuit.
The who’s who of the local running world would show up every Sunday. Sometimes an out of town celebrity would join us. Once it was Pat Tyson. Once it was a 13:?? minute 5K runner from Stanford. Even the legendary Steve Prefontaine ran there back in the days. But the core of the group was the local runners who I looked up to. There was John S. The Boeing employee who was the father figure that we all looked up to. He was tough and cool like most of us certainly weren’t. There was the local hero Leon. He was the runner we all wanted to be. Long black hair with a never tiring stride, winner of everything winnable in the area, a runner with so much potential. Mike the playboy, who entertained us with his tails of conquest at a time when I understood about 50% of what he was saying. Ernie the Coca Cola dealer, Gerry the teacher, Larry the Viet Nam vet all of whom I looked up to. They were the people that taught me what it was to be a man, to be an adult and that getting older wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The pace would always start slow but gradually it would pick up until I was struggling just to hang with the group. Each week I would get dropped but slowly the length of time I could stay with them was longer. After many months of getting left behind each week, I was finally able to stay with them. I still remember the feeling of sprinting through the trails, running as hard as I could and feeling the power in my body. It is a feeling I still hope for, a feeling of power that made it all worth it
I look back on those days 25 years ago as one of the best periods of my life. I was poor, had a indefinite future but I had the comraderie and connection to friends, something that never happened with the same intensity or quality.

Overview

It has been about two months since started this project. The past 8 weeks

1 - 61.4
2 - 68
3 - 70
4 - 36.9
5 - 60.9
6 - 63.5
7 - 63.6
8 - 64. 15

A typical week

Sunday 16
Monday - am 6
Tuesday am 5.25
pm 3 mile tempo 8 x 200 = 6
Wednesday am 3
pm - 5
Thursday - am 5
pm 4 x 1000 cutdowns starting at 4:10 to 3:39 - 5
Friday -am 5
pm -5
Saturday 6

So I would say I am satified with how things are going but it is time to move up another notch in the level of difficulty.

Another link

Each week is another link in the chain of weeks and months and years it takes to be successful. This past week I got 64 miles in with the same speed workouts as last week. It was a little harder this week because it has finally started to get hot. Rainy season is almost over and it seeems like the long hot summer is about to start. The Osaka area is one of the hottest and most humid parts of Japan. It can be very oppressive in the summer and I am hoping the real heat is slow in coming this year. I have been trying to bump up the mileage to the 70's for the past couple of weeks but it hasn't happened. It takes another jump in the level of commitment and it means I can't miss any runs. Whatever happens, storms, fatigue, sickness, laziness I can't miss a run. It will be easier after school finishes in a few weeks but I wouold like to get up to the 70's before then and hopefully into the 80's through vacation.