10-K race as a hard training run

Tokyo, Week 2, Day 7; 6.2 miles, 8:33/mile.

As today's a day off, I'll write about my race yesterday.

I ran a 10-K race along the Ara River. My goal wasn't to go out and kill it like a race I'm well prepared for; I wanted to just get out there at a kind of hard pace that I could hold up for the entire race. And, judging by the fact that today is the first day I've been sore since I started training, I must have succeeded in that.

I'm still not completely sure what I ran. First, my Nike+ iPod told me I reached the 5-K point a while after I reached the midpoint of the out-and-back run, meaning one of them was off. I think I might try to calibrate my Nike+ sensor on a track during the Namban Rengo's Wednesday night interval workout. Second, when I finished the race, I was too focused on getting a drink to bother to pay attention to my time, which I would have had to get off of the paper on to which they had noted it down. So that left me pretty much in the dark as to what I actually ran.

Still, the Nike+ iPod had my pace at something sub-8:00/mile for the first half and going as low as maybe 8:30/mile for the second half. I'd venture that I averaged about 8:15/mile, which would make put me at something over 50 minutes for the race. I hope they post the results soon so I can see how I really did. Update: The results have been posted here in the comments. My results were a little slower than I thought: 51:24, or about 8:33/mile.

Oh, and the women's race was won by the only other vegan in the group (go Meg!).

After the race, most of the participants went to a Japanese bath house. A nice dip in a Japanese bath after a race sure makes your legs hurt a lot less. I spent most of my time in the rotenburo, or outside bath, which is, as you might guess, outside. It was just cold enough to give you a nice chill when you got out of the hot water.

Then it was back to the river for the post-race barbeque, kids race and awards ceremony. In addition to us two vegans, there were a number of vegetarians with whom we set up a little vegetarian powwow. There was plenty of vegan food to go around; there was salsa, tortilla chips, potato chips, salad, and veggie skewers. Another vegetarian brought some tofu to cook up on the barbeque while I brought hummus, pita, and baby carrots. After eating some of all of that, I was pretty much completely stuffed.

All in all, a fun day and a decent run for just two weeks of training. That said, here's looking forward to lots of improvement...