Edogawa 10k

Yesterday's Edogawa 10k served as a wake-up call for me. It is apparent now that running two days per week is not adequate training to maintain my competitive racing level. For the past 3-4 months I have been doing a solid interval running workout every Wednesday night, but the rest of the week I am focused on swimming, cycling, and yoga. I assumed other run workouts will somehow materialize, but invariably what has happened is that each week I only end up squeezing in one additional garbage run - usually 8-9k around the Palace with a friend at a slow pace (see blog entry from October 7).


Prior to yesterday's 10k I knew I was in trouble (my Wednesday track times have been slipping by 5-10 seconds per kilometer). I ran the first kilometer of Sunday's race at 3:45, then attempted to increase the speed a bit. I hit the halfway mark at 18:27 at which point I could feel myself weakening. Somehow I managed to maintain a 3:40 pace for the next few kilometers.


The real shock came at the 9k mark when the course takes a U-turn and suddenly I spotted Namban teammate Bob Poulson right behind me. You have to realize that Bob is old -- very, very old. I am not even sure how old Bob is - when I joined the club I was told that Bob had originally come to Japan on Admiral Perry's Black Ships which would make him well over 100 years old.. Later I was told that Bob came to Japan even earlier than that -- walking across to Japan from Siberia during the last Ice Age when the oceans had retreated. These stories may be exaggerated, but in any case, Bob is much older than me.

So of course I pushed my legs as best I could over the last kilometer in order to stay ahead of the ancient one, and I managed to finish in 37:09 (slower than my half-marathon pace a year ago).

Now after all this seemingly negative talk, I should point out that I perceive the glass as being more than half full. The Edogawa event was a fine day. 25 teammates participated, 7 of them achieving personal bests. Everyone seemed to have a good time and I was glad to have played a small role in promoting the event. Moreover I managed to finish 8th in my age division and it was gratifying that I could be in the award ceremony at all given my low mileage training. (The Edogawa 10k award ceremony is a remarkable event in itself with the pageantry and ritual one would expect at the crowning of a new Roman Catholic Pope or Olympic opening ceremony).


Clearly cross-training allows me to maintain overall fitness. I know from past experience if I had not been doing the swimming and biking these past few months (or did nothing for more than 3 weeks) I would have been light years farther back.