13 K Run in Mito

I'm in Mito on a business trip. It's the capital city of Ibaraki Prefecture, about 130 km the north of Central Tokyo. With mental rehearsal almost done for a seminar tomorrow, I went out for a quick training run around Lake Senba near my hotel. There was a river nearby and a cycling road alongside that led to the lake. I ran along it, hoping to reach the lake, because on the map the road appeared to lead directly to it. However, what appeared to be a river was, in fact, a moat that surrounded the lake, and the cycling road went away from the lake near the north west corner of the lake. Without realizing that I was off the right track, I went on running for about 10 minutes. It was when it started getting darker and darker as I went that I was afraid something was wrong. I turned around, and headed back until I was back to an area where lights were abundant and people were in sight. I found myself in a parking lot adjacent to a park. I checked where I was. I was only half a kilometer from the nearest shore of the lake. I followed the direction of the map and finally got to where I had originally wanted to be! From that on it was a pleasant fun run around the lake. Originally I was only going to run 5 K or so, but the breeze across the lake was so refreshing, and there were quite a few runners as well as friends, couples, and even families that were enjoying a stroll, so I felt like going further than that. After all I kept on running at a fairly brisk pace for an hour and 15 minutes to cover approximately 13 K. There were occasional water breaks and brief stops to see maps to check my locations and the right routes, so if I exclude those times, I was probably running at a pretty good pace. My legs were pretty tense from the high intensity cardio from earlier today, but the cadence was good, and even when I felt tired, after lowering the pace slightly for half a minute or so, I could tell that my body had re-fueled my legs, so it's possible for me to pick up the pace again. I cannot identify exactly what has enabled me to do it during a long and hard training run. But I am glad that I can.