Wednesday night workout

Every Wednesday night for the past couple of months, I have been taking the bus/train/subway into Osaka to run with a group at Osaka castle. There are two reasons I am making this long trip every week. The first is that I need some running companionship. It is quite difficult to do my hard runs by myself and a group definitely raises the level of my training. The second reason is as an English teacher in Japan it is not easy to get opportunities to speak Japanese. My life revolves around English. When I teach I am speaking English and most of my colleagues are westerners so I don't speak Japanese very often except when I go into town to shop etc. Anyway this has been a great experience because I can combine a great training run with some contact with Japanese culture.

Anyway this past Wednesday was another tough workout. The plan was 12k at 4:30 per k pace with the last 3k as fast as desired. This week there were just three of us, myself and two guys I had never run with before. We started of with Akaishi san in the lead. He said he was out of shape and was going to run 5 min. pace but of course was bluffing and from the gun was running about 4:20's. I ran just off his shoulder the whole time but let him set the pace. It was quite inconsistent ...he would run steady and then he would push the pace for a while. I never felt like I was going to drop but I could tell he was pushing it. I don't know if he was actually trying to drop me but it felt like it. In this kind of run I fell obliged to stay with the group until the last 3K as per instructions. So if one of the other runners is surging I have to just keep up but I always feel like I can't surge back. I have to take it without responding. So we went on this way for a while surge, slow, surge, slow, when a little toy dachshund came running at me and brought me to a halt. I knew it wasn't going to bite me but I just didn't want to trip over it. Anyway by the time it lost interest the other two runners were way ahead. They didn't slow for a second. So after I caught up to them I decided since they didn't wait for me I had no great obligation to slow down and run with them so I just went by them. They made an attempt to stay with me for a bit but Mr. "Surge" dropped quite quickly and "runner X" tucked in behind me until the 3k to go mark. At that point he asked me if I wanted to speed up. Usually on the last leg we run quite hard and I am used to pulling away from whoever i am running with here. But when I increased the pace he just tucked in behind me. The last 3K I was pushing quite hard and the last 1.5 k was almost race pace but he stayed on my shoulder the whole time. I was definitely doing my best to drop him with no luck. As came to the end of the 12K I was totally dead but to my chagrin he said thanks for the run and turned around to do one more loop of the 3k course. When you run hard with someone you can definitely tell where you are in the hierarchy of the group. It was obvious at that point that he was the fitter person that day. But what a great run. I could never put in that kind of effort by myself.