3 K Fast Run

Sanspo Chiba Marine Half Marathon takes place tomorrow.
To get ready for the race I did my final training for it.
It's 3K fast run.
You aim for 4 minutes to cover 1 K,
keep that pace, and run total 3 K.
The purpose of this training to stimulate your cardio-vascular system.
You don't want to fatigue your legs too much,
so anywhere between 3 and 5 K is optimal.
If you go beyond that distance,
you may not be able to fully recover before the race.
Tonight I ran 3 K in 12 minutes 26 seconds,
with the average speed at 4 minutes 9 seconds per 1 kilometer.
Not bad.
I'm now going to hit a shower, give my legs some massage,
do some stretching and hit the bed.
Cannot wait to hit the road tomorrow...

1.3 K × 3 Sets Build-Up Training

With three days remaining before Sansupo Chiba Marine Marathon on Sunday,
I did build-up training.
It's a training mainly focusing on speed.
After brief jogging for warm up,
you run 1.3 K three sets,
each time trying to improve your time by 5 seconds from the previous set.
The last lap is always the hardest.
But when the workout is done,
you will find yourself in a state of ultimate euphoria.

Tonight my first lap is 6:04, and slightly slower than my original goal,
but I caught up in the second, and last lap,
so in the end I was able to cover 3.9 K in 17 minutes 39 seconds.
After taking a shower, I had an orange, a piece of apple, aged black garlic
with a small glass of red wine.
While having the orange, I was engulfed by that euphoric mood,
and it lasted way over an hour after the post-workout snack...

One Hour Jog

With 5 more days to go before Sanspo Chiba Marine Half Marathon,
I went for a one-hour slow jog after work.
I covered just a little bit over 10 K.
Breathing was easy.
I felt no pain in joints.
Leg movement was smooth.
Overall it was a comfortable run.

Tomorrow I am going to do some core training in the morning,
and do some stretching in the evening.

On Thursday night I am going to do some pace running.
This is also the day I began carb loading.

On Friday I'm going to take a full rest, and carry on with carb loading.

On Saturday I'm going to have a fast run for 4 K,
and this is going to be my last physical training
before the race.

10 K Run

It's exactly a week before Sanspo Chiba Marine Half Marathon today.
I am going to run 10 K.
I am going to run at a pace that is challenging but not too hard.
My personal best for the distance is 42 minutes something,
but this is more than three years ago.
My most recent time is 47 something.
So I'm glad if the time is somewhere between 47 and 49.
I'm hitting the road now.

Midnight 5.2 K Run

With 8 days remaining before a half marathon,
I've decided to hit the road for a quick run.
I'm going to run around a park in my neighborhood 8 times.
One circle is 0.65 K.
Eight circles makes 5.2 K.
The first two is warm up.
In the next two I'm going to cover 1.3 K in somewhere
between 6:10 and 6:20.
After that I'm going to try to gradually improve the time
by five seconds for the following twos.
This is for stimulating my leg muscles,
which feel sufficiently recovered from the 20 K run
on Wednesday night.
On Sunday I would like to run 10 K in Yokohama
at a reasonably challenging pace.
I have a pretty organized training regimen all lined up
for the last week before the race.
But I would like to write about it in my next post.

Midnight Interval Training: 1 K × 7 Sets

With 15 days remaining before my first road race of Year 2016
I did interval training after work.
This was my first major running training
after having a 30+ K run this past Monday.
In fitness your muscle starts getting weaker 96 hours after doing any substantial training.
I gave myself a complete rest from Tuesday through Thursday,
so tonight was the last chance from me to stimulate my body
before losing all the gain from the good workout on Monday.
The details of tonight's training is as follows:

Lap 1: 4:08
Jog: 2:00
Lap 2: 4:02
Jog: 2:00
Lap 3: 4:10
Jog: 2:00
Lap 4: 4:16
Jog: 2:00
Rest: 0:30
Lap 5: 4:16
Jog: 2:00
Rest: 0:30
Lap 6: 4:19
Jog: 2:00
Final Lap: 4:07

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9iF2phtz4s

The purpose of this training is to improve speed
and ability to quickly recover from fatigue.

Thanks to the 30+ K slow run on Monday
I saw improvement both on speed and recovery speed.

I am hoping to hit the road again either on
Sunday or Monday, this time for a long slow run
mainly for building endurance.

When a Pop Singer Becomes a Jazz Pianist...

I was eating avocado with 'nori' seaweed and beer
when there was a TV program of pop singer Kyoko Koizumi.
She was interviewing Mr. Senri Ohe.
To me he is a pop singer.
I would listen to him day and night when I was in my early twenties.
However, according to my bilingual companion who was watching the program
next to me,
Mr. Ohe is now a jazz pianist based in New York.
I was surprised.
And it got me thinking what made him abandon pop music.
This is purely my imagination,
but I thought he had been tired of pop music.
Exactly what about it had he been tired of?
Well, I guess there are zillions of things you can be bored of about pop music.
But the most obvious one is that lack of novelty.
There are certain common denominators,
and most melodies are their variations.
Listeners can expect what's coming next.
If you are producers only interested in cashing in on innocent young consumers,
that may be fine.
But a true artist will find it distasteful.
There is no way of telling why,
but my guess is that Mr. Ohe didn't see any challenge
in producing pop music,
and found greater excitement
in unexpected elements inherent in jazz.
Because jazz is all about extemporaneity, or going with the flow,
where your intuitive reaction, almost like a reflex,
is all that counts.
In my wild guess, that is what brought the former pop singer
to the artistic center of the world,
where serendipity is a daily event.