Winter is coming

Tokyo winter - bleak and grey

I arrived back in Japan this Monday after a pretty good two weeks in Australia. The weather there was up and down, but the last couple of days were quite warm. Monday I was basically flying all day, and Tuesday I spent putting stuff away and cleaning up. Today was a day off too, and I settled back into Japanese life.

The weather had changed noticeably since I left, and most people on the streets were fully outfitted in their winter clothes. I started wearing a beanie and gloves for the first time this year. Winter is coming.

Japanese winters are not much fun for me. I grew up in country Victoria, and while that is not exactly the outback, winters were not anywhere near as cold and dark as here in Tokyo. And Tokyo’s general lack of vegetation makes it particularly bleak and grey in winter.

The cold and the wind are not so nice, and the fact that it gets dark at around 5pm doesn’t help. But there is something else about the winter here, something I can’t quite articulate, that I don’t look forward to at all, and the rapid weather change brought it home today.

Then I went to Namban. Tonight we did 1200m, 1200m, 1000m, 1000m, 800m, 800m. I started out wearing many layers of clothes, and gradually stripped down over the course of the intervals. I have hardly run at all since the Osaka marathon, and it felt good to be at the track again. I am a little out of shape after no running and lots of unhealthy food in Australia, but my legs definitely benefited from the rest.

As the intervals continued I gradually felt better and better, and the weather didn’t feel so cold at all. For the last 800 meters, Natalie kicked off her shoes to run barefoot, so I did too. We tore around the track, and as I was running out of energy at around 600 meters she encouraged me to keep up, which I did, and we made it to the finish line together. It was a good run.

Walking back to the change rooms I felt better than I had in days. The run around the track had blown away the cobwebs, the cold, and the darkness, and left me feeling much better. Winter is coming, but I feel ready to face it now.

The Osaka Marathon

Pre-race, near Osaka castle

Time: 5:10:56 - 16 minutes faster than my previous PB

Marathons are a tough event. But they are getting easier each time. My first in 2007 was hell on earth. My second in February this year was a very tough ordeal. My third, in Osaka last weekend, was difficult but much more manageable. I’m slowly getting closer to where I want to be as a runner.

Last weekend I went to Osaka for the first Osaka marathon, running it with fellow Nambanners Chika, Laci, and Thomas. It had been eight months since the Tokyo marathon, and I had done a lot of running, including a few races.

I didn’t run for a week before the marathon, and was feeling fine, until about 24 hours before the race when I started getting pain in the heel of my left foot for no apparent reason. I wondered if I should even go ahead and do the marathon, but it seemed a waste to have come all this way to just give up. So I got into my running gear and got to the start.

Chika, Laci, and Thomas were all in different starting blocks so I just sat down under a tree while I waited for the start, willing my heel to stop hurting. It didn’t. The race started, and I felt better once I started moving, somehow running felt better than walking or even sitting still.

The weather was cool and overcast, and I jogged slowly through the first few kilometers, passing the genki young-ish governor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto who was also running, quite a contrast to Tokyo, where the grizzled governor Shintaro Ishihara just waved regally down at the runners from his platform.

The crowd was very friendly, and it felt a bit different to Tokyo. There seemed to be many more older people than in Tokyo, and while Tokyo’s course seems to spend a lot of time hovering around the centers of political and economic power, Osaka’s seemed to spend more time going through regular neighborhoods. On some level there seemed to be more town pride too – I got the feeling that the Tokyo marathon was about the marathon, but the Osaka marathon was about Osaka.

The organization was quite good, everything seemed to work, and unlike Tokyo this year the water stations did not run out towards the end. More toilets would have been nice, but apart from that it was all good.

By about half-way through the race I wasn’t noticing my heel at all, but my left ankle had started to hurt a lot, which meant I spent the second half of the race alternating between walking and running. That was frustrating, but I still managed to make decent time, and if it hadn’t been for ten or so minutes waiting to go to the toilet I probably would have hit my goal time of five hours.

In Tokyo in the final run up to the finish line at Tokyo Big Sight for some reason the spectators are fenced off behind high walls. In Osaka this was not the case and through those last few kilometers it really helped to be able to skim past high-fiving the crowd and getting that little energy boost from them.

When I finished Tokyo, I collapsed against a wall and then dragged myself home on blistered feet, in agony for a few weeks afterwards. This time, I was tired and in pain but not anywhere near as wrecked, and the next day Thomas and I wandered around for a few hours doing sightseeing.

It is finished! Self, Thomas, Laci, and Chika.
Pic taken by Naoko, courtesy of Laci.

Everyone did well, “Rocket” Chika ran 3:24:58, Laci ran a PB of 3:56:42, and Thomas, in his first ever marathon, finished in 4:42:52.

As for me, my body is gradually toughening up, and next time I will break five hours. Each time gets a little easier, and I hope before long I will have the strength in my legs to run the whole distance. I hope to make it back to Osaka next year, and really give the course a run for its money!

Running Barefoot

Last night at Namban’s monthly 5k time trial I achieved a new personal best, completing 12½ laps of the track in 22 minutes, 9 seconds, and 54 milliseconds, beating my previous time by 17 seconds.  And I did it barefoot.

Like a lot of people I was inspired by Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run to give barefoot running a try, and I like it. I usually do part of Namban’s training sessions barefoot, and when I go running on my own I usually take off my shoes for the last kilometer or so on the way home. I do sometimes wonder what people make of the guy in running gear carrying a pair of perfectly good shoes though!

While the skin on the bottom of my toes felt a bit sensitive after running 5k, the rest of my body felt better. I get lots of aches and pains from running, usually around my shins, ankles, and instep. When I go barefoot, however, I don’t tend to get so many. The only issue is that the soles of my feet haven’t hardened up enough yet.

Less pain is good, but aside from that I feel freer while running without shoes. It feels good to have your feet hit the ground unencumbered by shoes. Even minimalist running shoes like Five Fingers or less cushioned sneakers like the Adizero Japan feel chunky and inhibiting. Running barefoot feels so much freer.

A large part of the reason I run is because it is time off from the world. Sometimes it is just a slog or tedium, but there are moments of achievement, or moments that manage to get me out of myself, away from this world of routine, stress, and everyday life.

Somehow running without shoes seems to help that process. It feels good to feel the texture of the ground, to feel the temperature of the surface, with no layer of leather, plastic, or padding in between.

After the run, on Laci’s suggestion I walked across the cool grass in the center of the track. It felt like a massage. Going barefoot and feeling the ground beneath our feet is something very simple, but something that we have lost touch with in this world of leather office shoes, multi-colored running shoes, and a type of shoe for every situation in-between.

It puts us in touch with the ground beneath our feet, but it puts us in touch with more than that. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that is.

Honorary Olympians

Our pre-race publicity shot

It is not everyday that one gets the chance to run in an Olympic stadium under a fire burning in the Olympic cauldron, but that is how I spent last Sunday afternoon. It was a memorable event.

Daniel, myself, Cato, and Thomas ran an ekiden, a Japanese long-distance relay race. None of us had done one before, and being Australian, Norwegian, and Canadian, we didn’t quite know how it all worked. Thomas did a great job taking care of registration and organizing things on the day.

There were over 400 four-person teams participating in the Number Do Ekiden, but everything seemed well-organized and went off without a hitch.

As it was our first race we had chosen a short ekiden, 18 kilometers in total, with Daniel running the first 6k leg, myself on the second 4.5k leg, Cato on the third 3k leg, and Thomas running anchor on the final 4.5k leg.

It was a hot, humid day, but fortunately the race started at 4pm, so it was not as bad as it might have been. All went well, apart from when I got confused towards the end and almost did an additional lap of the stadium.

We are the champions!

As with most Japanese races, a number of runners dressed up, with wigs, traditional Japanese dress, and one particularly masochistic team ran the entire distance inside a cardboard box! Despite that they managed to avoid last place, coming in second last to a rousing reception.

As we were unhindered by lugging a box around we did pretty well, finishing 71 out of the 408 finishing teams, with a total time of 1:24:50. Daniel ran his 6k in 24:38, my 4.5 was 21:55, Cato’s 3k was 17:03, and Thomas brought us home with his 4.5k on 21:16.

We finished off the day with a trip to an Izakaya (Japanese pub) and then some karaoke. A good end to a great day!

Starting video, shot by Thomas on his iPhone. The running box comes on-screen at 0:44.