february training summary

this month was about miles. trying to run lots of miles! i also had a bit of a taper before the half-marathon and took it easy the week after that in an attempt to keep my legs fresh and to take some pressure of my feet! anyway, here is what i did:

distance: 132.3miles (212.2km)
time: 15hours 49minutes 43seconds
runs: 7 easy, 3 long, 6 tempo, 1 race

it was a really good month's training. the only negative was some nice blisters from the half-marathon, but i am not surprised as i am wearing in some new shoes too. running really well and feeling really good. will try to put in a good couple of long runs before tapering for the marathon.

inuyama half-marathon results

found out today that my official place in the half marathon was 24th out of 3473 finishers. i am very happy with that! here were my split times:

5km: 18mins 12secs
10km: 36mins 43secs (18mins 31secs)
15km: 54mins 44secs (18mins 01secs)
20km: 1hour 12mins 54secs (18mins 10secs)
finish: 1hour 16mins 42secs (3mins 48secs)

two days later and my legs are recovering. took yesterday off but will probably got for a nice easy recovery jog tonight and then start to get back on with my training towards the anjo marathon at the end of march. my aim for that marathon has not changed at all - i just want to finish it! under 3 hours would be great, but that is it!

mara yamauchi

here is a photo of me and mara yamauchi after the inuyama half marathon. thank you to mara for the encouragement at the end of the race!

inuyama half-marathon

i ran the inuyama half-marathon today and knocked over four minutes off my personal best with a time of 1hour 16minutes and 42seconds. not sure about the position yet, but definitely in the top 30 and there were over 4000 runners competing, so i am very happy right now!

rie and i went up to inuyama on saturday morning and stayed at an onsen hotel. little did we know that lots of other runners were staying there, including the special guest runners. the special female guest runner was a british woman (who works at the embassy over here and is married to a japanese guy) called mara yamauchi. for those who don't know she is currently ranked 6th in the world for women's marathon runners so she is pretty fast! anyway, at dinner we saw her and i went to say hello. she was so friendly and happy to chat to a random person like me. it always makes me happy when a fellow brit is kind and friendly as opposed to drunk and falling over outside a bar!

after a nice onsen and a great sleep i felt good this morning. i managed to get near the front for the start to avoid being stuck behind 4000 other people and felt really good for the first few km. after about 7km i felt like i could even go a bit quicker so upped the pace a little. went through 10km in about 36mins 41seconds. i then started to realise that i felt so much better than the nagoya half-marathon (when i ran with an injury) and so pushed on a little. i ran my 2nd 10km in about 36mins 04seconds, and overtook lots of runners so that made me feel even better. i even overtook mara (who was doing this as a guest runner, so not running full pace!). with about 500m to go i heard someone coming up behind me and breathing way too easily. sure enough, it was mara. she encouraged me to push it for the end, which was really nice, and i sprinted home, running my final 1000m faster than any other 1000m i did in the race.

at the end i shook hands with mara and said thanks. she even kindly posed for a photo with me in front of rie. rie cheered me all the way and was ready for me at the end with warm clothes, sports drinks and lots of words of encouragement and congratulations. it was a perfect run!

so very happy (and quite sore) as i write this now. inuyama was beautiful and a great place to run. the crowd were great as usual. i met a famous marathon runner and even beat her in a sprint finish (her personal best is 8minutes faster than mine though!!!).

japan-based kenyan runner dies

according to news reports, japan-based long-distance runner jefferson siekei has been killed in a road accident in kenya. he was 25 years old and had been a runner for the hitachi cable athletics team in japan since 2007. he had already put in several strong performances in events like the national corporate ekiden road relay.

he was riding a motorcycle on his way to a competition when he crashed head-on with a truck. on february 9th, yamanashi gakuin university runner mekubo mogosu suffered minor injuries in a car accident in kenya.

there are quite a few foreign runners based in japan, especially long-distance runners. perhaps the most famous is samuel wanjiru (who won the marathon in the beijin olympics). other runners include mara yamaguchi and erick wainaina. having been to kenya i can imagine how easy it would be to be involved in a traffic accident and of course it is no more tragic just because this particular victim happened to be a relatively famous runner. despite that it is sad enough and my thoughts go out to his family, friends and team-mates.

my suunto t3c watch

last september i got a suunto t3c running watch. i think the 'c' stands for comfortable or something like that, otherwise i guess it was the same as the t3 watch. i got the running kit which included the heart-rate strap and the foot pod. the foot pod attaches to your running shoes with a pretty simple but sturdy clip through the laces. all the heart-rate strap requires is a simple click and the strap itself is very easy to adjust. i paid 100 pounds for it from the adventure shop in the uk (http://www.adventureshop.co.uk/). i ordered it online and they delivered it to japan quickly and promptly, it was all good.

so, what do i think? well, i read some articles online that said it was difficult to get into the watch and to understand it quickly and so on, but i have to say that it was really easy to set up and to use from the start. you just enter your vital details and then you're good to go. the foot pod is ready ready to go from the box, although you can go to a track and run an exact distance to make sure the calibration is correct. the watch has plenty of functions, but there are basically three main screens: one shows the time (as in the time of day), the next one shows your heart rate (with running time above) and the third one shows your speed (with distance above). clearly you need the foot pod for the speed and distance setting to work. below the main display you can scroll through various views such as lap time, total time, distance, average speed, calories and so on.

because the screen has one main piece of information, the information above and below that can seem a bit small at first and it is not so easy to see if you are running at full speed in the dusk... but how often do you do that anyway?! on normal runs it is very easy to view the screen and to scroll through the various functions. it also has an excellent storage facility (15 logs) so you can easily replay all your information after the run. you can also set heart-rate zones, speed-zones, intervals and so on. if you buy the pc pod (which i don't have) you can simply download it all straight into the computer without have to do anything.

one cool thing is that the watch will tell you your "training effort" for each session you do. this is a number between 1 and 5 (with 5 being the hardest effort). while simplifying things a lot, this allows you to control how hard you are training, mainly so you don't overdo things. the watch will even tell you during a run how long you have to go until you jump to the next level! it also adapts to your training - if you train every day, you will have to work harder to achieve a rating of 5 and vice-versa. it might seem like a gimmick, but it is a nice little addition.

i'd really recommend this watch. the heart-rate strap has never lost contact and i only had to replace the foot pod battery once. the watch tells me all i need to know (and more) and i have no trouble viewing it while running normally. the buttons are easy to push and it was really easy to set up. the guide is excellent and the online help service is also fantastic. more than anything, it takes so much guesswork out of running. now i always know how far, long and fast i am running for. i am sure there are better and worse watches out there, but i love my suunto!

check out the official page here:
http://www.suunto.com/

the (re)birth of "tiger running"

having recently purchased a new pair of shoes with some cool kanji on them, i thought i would start keeping a blog about my running. the kanji on the shoes (虎走) literally means "tiger running" and so i decided to name the blog the same.

i used to run a lot. when i was 16-19 years old all i did was run. i wanted to be a professional runner. maybe i could have been, but by the time i got to university the fire was burning out. i was burning out. too much training made running no fun anymore. maybe i couldn't be a professional sportsman. aside from lacking the true ability (haha) i like playing sports because they are fun. i love the competition and the comradeship and the games and the training and everything, but most of all i love that it is fun. so i stopped running seriously and did lots of other things that i enjoyed, like playing football and other sports and generally enjoying my youth!

but i always loved running. the freedom. the individuality. the long hard slogs through knee-deep mud on a cold and rainy sunday. the feeling of sun on tired legs at the end of a race. the smell of new shoes. the comfortable feeling of old shoes. over the past ten years or so i have occasionally started running again, but never with any particular aim.

despite living in japan since 2004, it wasn't until i got married that i realised that the japanese attitude towards long-distance running is a perfect match for me. firstly, my wife is as into sports as i am. secondly, people here in japan not only understand the desire, strength and sacrifice required to run long-distance, but they actively embrace it. just read about marathons and ekidens and you will see how closely the japanese spirit is entwined with that of the long-distance runner. the fact that a normal person in japan knows how far a marathon is and how fast is a good time, the fact that a regular city race will close down main roads and bring out thousands of cheering spectators, the fact that people love and respect running... all these things rekindled my fire. i could feel that burning desire to run again.

so i did. but now i don't run to win medals or be the best in the world. i just run because i want to. i run because i love the feeling of running. i do love running fast, but it is about more than times and positions now. it is about running for the enjoyment of running. i will still try to set personal bests, but i will cherish the feeling of finishing a run as much as the feeling of beating a time.

on this blog i will talk about shoes, races, training... but mainly about the feeling of running again. i hope that it will inspire some more people to start running, be it for the first time or starting again after an absence.

i am a tiger, a tiger running.

got my new shoes on...

after topping 500 miles in my old adidas mana shoes i decided it was time to get some new ones. so i headed to sports depot in nagoya and bought myself a pair of asics tarther first edition shoes. they are dark blue (not that colour is important for running shoes!) and they have 虎走 written in kanji on the tongue. it means "tiger running". hence the name of this blog. as asics have just released a new edition of the tarther series these were reduced from 13,000 yen (100 pounds) to 9,000 (70 pounds). i like them.

i also thought i would see if the kind people at adidas might trade in my old adidas mana shoes for some new ones. they did! for only 150 yen (1 pound) i changed my beat-up yellow shoes for the new series of mana shoes in a flashy red colour (because colour is important when it is the same as my football team!). i have been running in mana shoes for over two years now and i really like them, especially for training.

will update you on how these two pairs of shoes work out.

first really long long run

today i decided to put some serious miles into my legs. even though i did the yasso 800m workout on friday i felt really good and so wanted to do my long run as normal today. i have found a loop of about 16-17km around nagoya that doesn't involve too many traffic lights. or if i get stuck at a light i can usually find another place to cross. so it means that i can keep running without too many stops.

as with the last long run, i decided not to take on any fuel, but as i was planing to run a little longer i wanted to give myself plenty of time to get some water. i decided to do two laps and so i left a litre of water in my bike basket near my apartment for halfway. here is the data from the run:

time: 2hours 35minutes 38seconds
distance: 33.75 km (21 miles)
pace: 7mins 26s /mile

this run felt really good. i have a small blister on my right foot, but nothing painful, and my legs began to feel quite heavy by the end. however, this is easily the furthest i have run since starting up again in japan and i felt like i could run a marathon! well, not straight away but you know what i mean! i don't feel like i needed any fuel to complete the run, but as soon as i stopped and was in the shower i felt pretty low on sugar and was glad to be drinking my pocari sweat!

lessons learned from this run were that i need to get some vaseline (for the places that rub...) and i also want to get some new shoes (as i am now over 500 miles in my current ones).

yasso 800s

in my ongoing training and desire to know how i am doing i came across an interesting training session for the marathon. accredited to burt yasso, the idea is that by running 10 repetitions of 800m you can estimate your marathon time. how does it work? well, relatively easily. you run your 10 reps and at the end you take the average 800m time in minutes and seconds and that will be your marathon time, in hours and minutes.

here were my results from today's session:
rep 1: 2m 57s
rep 2: 2m 51s
rep 3: 2m 53s
rep 4: 2m 50s
rep 5: 2m 56s
rep 6: 2m 55s
rep 7: 2m 52s
rep 8: 2m 52s
rep 9: 2m 49s
rep 10: 2m 46s
average time: 2minutes 52seconds ----- 5mins 47s /mile pace

as a recovery i jogged 200m in between each rep. my average recovery time was around 70 seconds. after i finished the session i read some more about this workout and found out that you should actually take the same recovery as your 800m rep time, so i clearly wasn't taking enough recovery. despite that it felt like a good session and is something i will do again (perhaps with more recovery this time).

i also read that some people seem to think that this works as a predictor but it predicts about 5 minutes too fast for the marathon time. as my rep average was around 2minutes 52seconds, that would point towards a 2 hour 57 minutes marathon time. fine by me!!!

clearly this predictor workout comes with plenty of warnings attached. you still need to do the necessary mileage training for a marathon, for example. completing ten 800m reps is obviously not the same as running over 42km! however, it was an interesting workout and made me feel pretty good! i think i can run it more effectively next time having done it once.