It's a national holiday.
But I worked from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm.
I left work a bit early to make adjustment for overtime on the previous day.
I went to Yoshinoya in Ginza to have a small quick dinner.
With my stomach half full, I walked to Raffine Running Style in Hibiya
to change into my athletic gear.
I have a membership at the one in Kanda, but didn't have one in Hibiya.
But they let me use their facility without asking for anything
except for my name and phone number.
I expected the place to stay open till late,
but a sign on the door said it closed at 8:00 pm.
It was almost 6:00 pm.
Though I was expecting to run 20 K,
obviously there wasn't enough time to run that much.
I immediately decided that 15 K would be the longest I could cover tonight.
I left the run base shortly after 6 o'clock,
and headed for the Imperial Palace.
It was said to be crowded with nearly 38,000 visitors earlier,
but not a soul could be seen,
and there were only some deserted tents
which probably were used to welcome in the visitors.
The sidewalk around the palace was almost empty.
There were few runners at first.
As I went on, though, I overtook some runners, but not many.
The night before Christmas Eve was definitely not a popular day
for running around the palace.
I finished my first lap at a fairly brisk pace,
and got right into my second lap.
It seemed to go on as in the first.
However, my right knee started hurting halfway into it.
I kept on awhile, but the pain grew discomforting,
Also, I didn't want it to lead to some sort of unrecoverable major injury,
so I stopped running and walked for a while as I rotated my shoulders
forward and backward alternately
to stimulate my deltoids and traps.
After taking a short active rest for about 5 minutes,
I started running again.
By then the pain had been gone, and I was positive I could go on.
But then it started hurting again shortly after I was into my third lap.
This time I didn't stop running, though.
Just like in a real race, I tried to manage the pain by slowing down and changing running form, and so on.
The pain was rather acute at the beginning,
but as I went on, it became gradually dull.
So I kept on going with the pain for a while,
and when the bight city lights of the Yurakucho district
were in sight, I increased my pace,
and when I finally came to the Sakuradamon Gate,
instead of turning left to go under the gate,
I kept straight and surged till the next intersection.
I could have gone for another block if I hadn't been stopped by the red light,
but lucky or not, the traffic light turned from green to red
just before I reached the intersection.
I came to a sudden halt, threw my arms on the guardrail nearby.
I was so out of breath, and it took a minute for my heart rates to calm down.
The light turned green again.
I started jogging back to the run base.
When I reached the intersection at one corner of the Hibiya Park,
I found myself waiting for the light to turn green with so many couples.
They were enjoying strolling along the street after dinner.
The light turned green.
I darted off from among the crowd across the street,
and in no time I was back at the run base.
It was a little less than an hour and half run with occasional walks and toilet breaks.
Chilly toward the end, but over all a pleasant one.
The run base was convenient.
500 yen for a locker and shower seems a good deal to me.
I'm going to use it more often.
My next training is either tomorrow or this coming Sunday.
I feel I need to be used to a distance beyond 25 K soon.
I'll put aside speed for a while.
Distance over speed as I am planning to test-run the new course of Tokyo Marathon 2017 soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment