The Japanese civil authorities seem willing to go to amazing lengths to avoid any risk at all of flood damage. One result is the construction of an elaborate and spacious network of bike paths and playfields that extend along the rivers. The most accessible and continuous of these bike paths in the Tokyo area is along the Arakawa River.
I leave my bicycle at Keren's house near Ome Station, which is a 10-minute ride from the river, and a direct 24-minute subway ride from my house. Taking the subway to my bike proves much easier than the nightmare of riding all the way from my house to the river.
Yesterday I feel strong enough again to do a few hours ride along the river. A few hours turns into a 3.5 hour workout with a difficult finish coming back from Tokyo Bay against the wind. The river trail is blissfully free of little league baseball players and people with pets, though I do need to dodge a number of very elderly Japanese men on rickety little bikes. These elderly men have the distressing habit of meandering back and forth across the path is a wide S-pattern, seemingly oblivious to all around them. I keep wondering how they have managed to survive to such an advanced age given their apparent lack of self-preservation skill.
I finish the ride at dusk and immediately head off to Oda Field for my Wednesday run with Namban Rengo. Instead of doing the 6x1000 track workout, I do a steady run, round and round and round and round the 400 meter track for some 18-kilometers. 45 laps around the track. Fortunately Mika T joins me for my final 7-kilometers as she is preparing for the Osaka Marathon in 10 days. She pushes my pace to 4:25 per kilometer, a nice brisk but comfortable speed. Even though it is a comfortable pace I whine to Mika about doing too much. Last night I feel a bit of fatigue and soreness from the workouts, but largely seem to have shaken the virus.
2 comments:
Interesting choice of present tense for those last two paragraphs. I feel as I am reading it that Jay is still suffering the affects of riding and running so far in such a short space of time. I am thinking this is a mother of all bricks.
By the way, those little old guys on their bikes are everywhere, in Japan, and most of them ride slower than 5:00/k pace. Also, why don't people learn to walk on the left. The LEFT I tell you!
..and still suffering in the present tense as of late Thursday afternoon.
If I had not run into Mika perhaps I would have stopped earlier.
But that 4:25 pace at the end boosted my confidence
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