Week of Aug. 22 ~ 28
Plan: 0/20/10/15/20/20/0 - 85km
Ran : 0/20/10/15/16/16/0 - 77km / 48 mi. 7:28
And went to watch the great Awa Odori Festival (videos at the end).
Planned a slightly easy week, with Sunday off as I will start running with the American School X-country team from Monday. Also had a very hilly trail run on Saturday.
Monday
Rest
Tuesday
11:30 - machines and core at the gym.
3:30 - 20k in 1:48:57 @5:27
29:20/28:26/25:50/25:18 @5:51/40/10/03
Wanted to run last 10k at about 5:10 pace.
Weather: 28C/82F, 65%
Weight: 59.9kg
Wednesday
7:30pm - Club track workout: 1200/1200/1000/1000/800/800
4:34/4:24/3:34/3:34/2:51/2:52 (3:00-3:30 jog)
Felt pretty good.
Weather: 27C/81F
Weight: 59.9kg
Thursday
3:30 - 15k easy in 1:21:10 @5:25
28:34/26:37/25:58
Friday
11:30 - machines and core at the gym.
2:00 - 16k in 1:26:03 @5:22
28:39/27:45/25:13/4:25 @5:44/33/02
It started raining at 8k, so turned around. Very strong wind, but rain didn't get hard (it did in downtown Tokyo, where several areas were flooded).
Felt ok but not great. Ran a good last k.
Weather: 31C/88F > 24C/75F
Weight: 59>6kg
Saturday
1:30 - 16k trail run - lots of very steep up/downs over rocks and roots in the hills above Kamakura (seasind town south of Tokyo). Easy pace, but not an easy run. Ran the last 600m back to the beach very fast.
22 people came out, about 10 of us did the entire trail run. Lots of beer and food on the beach afterwards.
Sunday
Went to see the Awa Odori in Koenji, a Tokyo neighborhood 20 minutes away by train. This is a famous Japanese dance festival, the main one being on Shikoku, the smaller island south of Japan's main island. The one in Koenji is the second largest in Japan, with about 200 dance groups and thousands of dancers. It's on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and tens of thousands of people go to watch, the streets are packed for a few kilometers. Awa Odori is colorful, musical and a ton of fun to watch. It's very simple, and the object is just to have fun. The song goes: Odoru aho ni, miru aho. Onaji aho nara, odorana son son.
The dancers are fools, the watchers are fools. If we're both fools, why don't you dance?
Here are three videos:
10 hours ago
That's my kind of run Saturday, and my kind of dancing - if I could borrow some of Scott's threads I could slip in there really well. Looks like they're from the Peter Garrett school of dancing ;)
ReplyDeleteHope you and the team raced well Monday - cross country in the heat of summer can be pretty grueling.
Very cool Bob! I'm of Japanese heritage - the dances bring back memories of trips to Little Tokyo when I was a child.
ReplyDeleteI've been to that festival and reckon it's one of the best in Japan. Still holds the personal record for me in amount of beers taken in 2 days!
ReplyDelete