13.8 K: 1:14:47
Six days have passed since that majestic victory by Eliud Kipchoge in London Marathon 2019. His overwhelming power rubbed off on me, I've been fidgety ever since, dreaming of someday running strongly like him...
Quite contrary to my ambition, though, when I got up this morning, I was a little sore from high intensity workout I had done on the previous morning. I was hungry also. I almost had a quick bite of banana or apple. But then I remembered the respectable marathon maestro and his teammates always have breakfast after their morning run. I threw myself into my running gear, and hit the road.
It's been a while since I ran last. I was afraid I had lost some of my fitness. But the affect was minimum. I was afraid my soles had gotten softer because they were inside wet boots for so many hours during rainy-day bike rides. But they were still strong enough to withstand the roughness of the initial section of the course today.
A couple of kilometers of warm up run got my body's key joints aligned nicely. Once I felt reasonably warmed up, I enjoyed changing pace every now and then. I increased both cadence and pace when going up an upward incline and slowed down to recoup on flats.
Around the 6 K mark there is a park. I had always thought there was no tap water available. There was none visible from the street I ran. But I found out today that I was wrong. There was. It's only that I took a better look across the park, and I spotted one. The park will be my first aid station from now on when I train on this course...
Past the park I took a left turn into a large loop around Yukarigaoka's residential district developed by general contractor Yamaman Corporation. At another park along the loop I took a right turn into the residential area, cutting across it toward north. A brief run across that neighborhood took me the northern tip of the loop. I then took a right again back into the loop, and from there continued down the road to the south until I hit Route 296, where the remaining distance is around 3 K.
I injected the pace, applying the advice by late Yoshio Koide who passed away at the end of last month. He's known as the coach of Naoko Takahashi who brought the first Olympic gold medal to Japan in the history of women's track and field. In his book he recommends trying to push the pace toward the end of every practice run.
To my surprise, pace increase was not too hard to handle. I kept the faster pace with ease. Occasional stops at traffic lights and a railroad crossing were frustrating. But even without them I would have been able to go on without running out of gas.
I enjoyed running at a pace a lot faster than that at the time of start. I was constantly thinking about breakfast when I took off. But by the time I was back home, I found myself completely having forgotten about it. A positive feeling associated with a good morning run overshadowed the basic survival need.
But when I took a warm pleasant shower, all of a sudden I was hit with a hunger attack. I quickly fixed a simple breakfast with steamed brown rice, beaten raw egg, and fermented soy beans, and enjoyed it to my heart's content. Though the meal was simple, I tasted a lot more delicious than breakfast I have with no exercise done before it.
