Sunday, February 5, 2017

Yokohama 20 K Run

I had a two-hour running session in Yokohama on Monday morning.
I left my hotel at 9:30 am, and headed south to the Yamashita Park. The streets were crowded with business people going to work. I ran through the crowd in my new orange top and light blue shorts that I had bought a day before. I was frequently stopped by red lights at intersections, but in less than ten minutes I reached the park. 

As soon as I got there, I dropped in at Lawson's to grab something to eat. My stomach was empty, and I was afraid of running out of gas while running without having anything in the stomach.

The park was filled with foreign travelers and locals, young and old, alone and in pairs or groups, some taking pictures of large ships, and others having their pictures taken with those ships in the backdrop. The sky was blue, and the air was crisp. It was a perfect day for a morning run.

                              

I ran to the east end of the park where there were steps leading up to a number of small separate sections with benches and flower gardens. Today no souls were seen there except for an old man doing some mysteriously original stretching, and yet another man checking some of his leg joints as if a mechanic were fixing a broken pair of glasses...

I ran back the same route across the park and get on the bridge leading to the Red Brick Warehouse over the Zou no Hana Park.

When I reached the Red Brick Warehouse, some event was going on. It looked like some kind of strawberry festival. More than a hundred people formed a long queue, waiting to get into an event hall. Later I found out that fresh strawberries from Chiba were to be offered to visitors for free at this event.


I chucked a uey here and headed back where I came from. But instead of going straight back to the Yamashita Park, I took a right into Osanbashi. Osanbashi is an international passenger terminal for those who travel abroad by ferry. The whole building is covered with wooden deck and is perfect for running because it absorbs the shock of landing. It's also good because it's rich in undulation. 


The top of the deck is a lot higher than the sea level, which allows you to command a great view of the surrounding sea. I slowed down a bit and took a few deep breaths to refresh myself. When I finally came back to the Yamashita Park, my watch said 38 minutes from the start. Considering my usual pace, I gathered that I covered about 7 K. I was going to repeat the same lap, but 7 K is slightly shorter than the course I am used to running. So in the second lap, I added some extra distance by going beyond the Red Brick Warehouse to go as far as the Cup Noodles Museum Park.

While running along the coast between the Red Brick Warehouse and the Cup Noodles Museum Park I saw another red brick warehouse. It didn't catch my attention before, but it looked fresh and renovated and some people were doing photo-shooting of a model and a crowd of people were talking cheerfully in a festive mood outside one of the shops. I may want to come here some other time.

I ran around the Cup Noodles Museum and headed back toward Osanbashi seeing the Red Brick Warehouse on my left. The queue outside the strawberry event had doubled in length by then. I was totally awed by their enthusiasm.

When I was back in the Yamashita Park again, it was even more crowded, filled with more signs of human activity. Large groups of kindergarten kids in colorful caps were seen here and there accompanied by their teachers who were mostly young women in their twenties and early thirties. Some of the movements by those kids were totally chaotic, showing a striking difference from the kind of discipline that characterizes the training of a marathon man.

I went for the third round, hoping that it would allow me to cover total 22.5 K. But the occasional stops at intersections in downtown Kannai caused some time loss. When I reached the Red Brick Warehouse for the third time, I was afraid I didn't have time to go to the Cup Noodles Museum, nor didn't have time to go to Osanbashi. So once I reached the Zou no Hana Park, I took a right and headed back downtown. When I finally came back to the Yokohama Stadium, I surged across the park with the Stadium on my right.  When I finally came back to the hotel, it was exactly 11:30 am. My watch said, 1:47:53. The total running time was shorter than scheduled, but I was satisfied. At my usual half marathon race speed I cover 21.1 K in 1:40:00. Today the pace was a lot slower, but not so slow. I probably covered between 20.5 and 21 K. That's close enough to what I aimed at. I can pat myself on the back.

My next training is this coming Thursday. I am going to do 1 K by 10 sets hill interval training. This is the first of my two speed-focused training sessions, which culminate with a 1 K by 13 sets hill interval session next Sunday.





No comments:

Post a Comment