14 K Alternate Run

Nov. 13, 2020

3.5 K: 19:36.68

3.5 K: 16:44.90

3.5 K: 20:01.78

3.5 K: 17:18.14

Total 14 K: 1:13:41

Running a long distance is not always easy, even for someone like me who like running a long distance. Difficulty is caused by many things. One of them is lack of sleep. I hadn't been able to sleep enough because of a preparation for corporate seminars. The toughest time is over now. I had a brief moment of peace of mind today. I went out for a bike ride to my favorite town of Togane just to breath in some fresh autumnal air in the countryside. 

After dinner my eyes felt heavy. I knew I should hit the bed to catch up on the sleep that I should have had but hadn't been able to have. But then another side of me craved for something physical. I wanted to reward myself for a good job done on Tuesday and Thursday. A good run will suffice. I threw myself in my running gear and hit the road.

I ran a new course tonight. It's an out and back 7 K course rich in undulation. While exploring my neighbor on my Vulcan S I found this awesome hill, and badly wanted to run it someday, so as soon as I got home that day, I Google-mapped the new course. The red area on the map above is the steepest hill, but there are a couple of other upward inclines, and both are not easy. 

In order to stay motivated through the training tonight, I jogged the outbound 3.5 K and injected the pace on the return.

It's funny, because after running at a brisk pace, you want to jog, so after running 7 K, going for another 3.5 doesn't seem like an undesirable obligation. You feel like running for another short while at an easy pace. But then yet another funny thing is that after jogging 3.5 K, this time you want to kick. In no time you have covered 14 K!

 

Final Phase Conditioning (2): One-Minute Alternate Runs

Nov. 27, 2018

With five days remaining before Hadano Tanzawa Minase River Half Marathon 2018, I did speed-focused training: one-minute alternate runs. I was inspired to do it when I came across the training while reading "Running with the Kenyans" by Adharanand Finn. It's less stressful than interval training, but good when you do not have many hours to do long slow cardio, but still want to have a good sweat. 

After brief warm up I did ten sets of alternate runs, one slow run and one fast run. Before jogging back home, I stopped by a small park and did swing push ups to hit my chest and core. 

I was not going to eat anything after the training, but I was so hungry that I had a bowl of miso soup, a pack of fermented soybeans with black sesami seeds and dried shrimped sprinkled on them, and a small piece of left-over grilled sea bream. Nothing starchy, because that would have killed my effort to lose weight for the race.