Tokyo, Week 7, Day 6; ~13 miles, ~9:00/mile.
While Joe continues his battle with a variety of injuries, I continue my battle with not having time to run. This week work totally pwned my running time. I was barely able to scrape up 2 or 3 hours of sleep each night, much less find the time to get out for a run. The end result was that I didn't run at all during the work week.
Last night was another late night because of work, so I didn't get to bed until like 6 a.m. Luckily, I had basically cleared off my work plate and could finally catch up on sleep. When I woke up at 3:30 p.m., feeling refreshed, it was time to go out for a run.
At the outset of the run, it didn't look like things we going to be pretty.
- I hadn't done any sort of meaningful exercise since last Sunday, when I did a nice long bike ride.
- The 12-mile (19.3-kilometer) run today was to be the longest run yet.
- My route today (to and back from Ueno Park) was a new one, so there was a risk of messing things up.
- I hadn't eaten anything since like 2 a.m. the night before, more than 12 hours before I left the gate.
- I hadn't drank anything since the same time.
And then there were all the things that went wrong during the run…
- Unsurprisingly, I got totally lost. This extended my total route by something like 4 miles (two out and two back) and, in addition to needing to stop regularly to cross streets as usual, I had to stop constantly to consult with maps and with police officers in kobans.
- My Nike+ iPod set-up decided to go totally whack on me. For the first chunk of my run, it clocked me running at about 20 minutes per mile (12.4 minutes per kilometer), which was undoubtedly more than twice as slow as I was actually running. It seemed to have fixed itself after that, with current-pace checks putting it at 8-something or 9-something per mile, but then it did this annoying thing where, when I pressed the button to pause and then restart the workout, it ended my workout. It did that twice, breaking my workout into three segments. However, only two of the segments appear to have been recorded; the first, including that dirt-slow incorrect pace, and a short distance towards the very end.
- I barely managed to keep a side stitch at bay for much of the latter half of the run.
- I became ravenously thirsty and could do nothing but think of water towards the end of the run.
- I fought off some weird tightness in a groin tendon that kept me from running for the last few miles (after I had already ran the 12 I set out to do).
The basic route from my apartment to Ueno Park was to run up Hibiya Avenue (日比谷通り) and then scoot over to and run up Central Avenue (中央通り) until I was near Ueno Park. I was fine as far as Hibiya Avenue, when I realized that I had totally botched the move over to Central Avenue. This led me on a circuitous route that finally brought me to the north end of Ueno Park; I had calculated my route based on arriving at the south end, as I was heading north from my apartment towards the south. The trip home wasn't much better. As I had completely missed Central on the way up, I figured I'd just find Hibiya Avenue on the way down. I didn't get back to Hibiya Avenue until somewhere around Hibiya Park, which was basically about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) from my apartment. Keep in mind that I'd guesstimate (since my Nike+ iPod set-up went on the fritz) that by that point I had already ran the entire 12-mile (19.3-kilometer) run I had set out to do.
As a side note, my little course today probably hit up a lot of familiar sites to anyone who's been a tourist in Tokyo: Hibiya Park, the Imperial Palace, Tokyo Dome, Tokyo Prince Hotel, Tokyo Tower, Tokyo University, Ueno Park, Yasukuni Shrine, etc. In fact, today was the first time I've ever actually been to Tokyo Tower; although I obviously didn't go up it, I ran right past the base of it.
Counting just the actual course I was supposed to run today, the run itself felt pretty good. I'm pretty sure my initial pace was between 8:00 and 8:30 per mile, and it would have probably averaged out to around 9:00/mile. But, of course, that was with lots of stops due to traffic lights, map checks, and koban conferences.
Somewhere around maybe mile 10 or so, my desire for water became overbearing. I kept looking in every store, wondering if I could go in and bum a drink. Whenever running near a park, I became all hawk-eyed in my search for a water fountain. I hit the 12-mile mark (i.e., the goal of my run) somewhere around Hibiya Park on the way back. I pondered walking for a bit, but then I decided I'd just keep running until I found water.
That lasted about another mile or so, when fatigue made stopping and starting at traffic lights rough. At this point, my body was so in need of sustenance and drink that it was opposing my restarting the run every time I stopped. I think if I had been able to just keep going I would have made it even farther, but I'd guess that I stopped running and just started walking somewhere in the 13th mile. This foiled my plan to be a tough guy and finish out the run even though I would have tacked on like 4 miles to the 12 I needed to do.
My new plan became finding water and then running the rest of the way. I was to the point where I was thinking about going into a train station and drinking from a bathroom sink (remind me never to get myself to that point again), but finally my park hawk eyes found a water fountain in the little park on the corner of Hibiya Avenue and the road that goes down to Tokyo Tower. I snortled down a bucket of water from that fountain, completely out of breath when done, and then went around for round two with the water.
Refreshed with a belly full of water—to hell with the risk of cramps—I was ready to run the rest of the way, which was about 2 miles at that point. However, once I started running, I was getting this weird tight, pulling sensation along the tendon that goes from thigh to groin. I tried to ease it out with relaxed form, but it wasn't going away, and indeed it was becoming more frequent. So I figured I'd walk a bit and hopefully it'd go away.
When I've got running shoes on, I've pretty much got no patience for walking. Tired, beat, and looking forward to food and a nice, hot ofuro, I was chomping at the bit to get running again. I tried two more times, but that tight tendon was still there. Figuring I was already teasing injury enough as it was, I decided that it was just time to grit my teeth and walk it in. I finally strolled into my apartment around 7:15 p.m., more than three hours after I started at around 4 p.m. With not even two hours of that as actual running, that meant that all the various stops plus the walking at the end took up well more than an hour.
At the end of the day though, I did seem to have gotten through more than a 12-mile run at a pretty good pace (around 9:00/mile, I'm guessing). I didn't fare so well when trying to push beyond that, but given the situation today, I'll take it. I suppose the fable of this little tale is don't get lost.
Once home, I inhaled two bananas and a lot of water. A bowl of curry soba quickly filled me up. I then hopped into the ofuro for a while, and let me tell you that water works wonders. When I got out, not even an hour later, I was already starving again; it felt like my body had sped up digestion. By 9 p.m., I was putting the kids to bed and fell asleep myself, only to wake up again at like 1:30 a.m., once again ravenous. It's a good thing the Indian restaurant right down the street is open late on Saturday night; a nice bowl of curry with rice plus some veggie samosas hit the spot just right.... at like 2 a.m.
Now I'm looking forward to tomorrow's bike ride... a nice easy bike ride, perhaps to Yoyogi Park again, feels like it's just the thing I need after today.
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