New Shoes

It’s time to buy myself some new running shoes. I’ve been running on the same pair of shoes for over a year now. They’re still good to go but it would be better to have some new shoes with proper cushioning because next month my weekly average will (hopefully) go over the 40K mark.


For more than one year I’ve been running and racing on my Blue Asics GT-2140 which have helped me through two long winters .

They are still wearable but as I said I need better cushioning and lighter shoes for more speed. I was thinking of buying the same shoes again but I want lighter and always had good experiences on my Nike’s, so I went shopping for new Nike shoes.

I went shopping at Sports Authority and Alphen Sports in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan where I found the latest Nike models very appealing. However, none of the shops were carrying my size (28.5 cm) so I went home and searched the web for Nike shoes. Online shopping is also a great way to find user reviews and maker suggestions on any model of interest.

I chose the new Nike Zoom Speed Cage+ 2.

Which I haven’t been able to find anywhere outside of Japan. I have found another type of the Nike Speed Cage2 but it doesn’t have the + (plus) in the name, so I guess it’s different not only in color but also in cushioning and finishing.

I've placed my order and hope to receive them either tonight or tomorrow evening. But I remember very clearly the first time I took my new Asics GT-2140 for a ride on through the local park and enjoying the fresh bounce too much that I went too hard, too long, and too fast. So I hope to restrain myself this time and let my feet get used to them slowly.

40K Week Total

Finally I have reached the 40K mark again. It has been almost one year ago since my last marathon race and the last time I ran 40K a week was about 8 months ago. It feels good physically and mentally to be able to this much in a week. Now with this solid base I will be able to go to 50K by increasing my long-runs. This week my longest run was about 10K and the other runs were about 6K and 8K. Hopefully I will be able to keep up the basic runs while increasing my long runs little by little.

It was just 2 months ago that I had to give up my marathon preparations because I was unable to run more than 10K without ending up in pain. Looking back upon that decision I know that it was the right one. Thanks to "marathon-training-guides.com" and "runningtimes.com forum" I got the courage to back-off from racing the marathon race which would have resulted in injury for sure.

Don't get me wrong, the last 6K leading up to the total of 40K were not easy and were at my slowest pace in many months. They were over 6min/k pace, but I just wanted to be save and not over strain my legs.

 

Marathon Interval Training

Finally it seems that my legs are accepting interval training for prolonged time. I’ve tried interval training before but started with 1000 meter increased pace with a couple of hundred meters jogging interval. But that gave me lots of pain in my calves and Achilles. Now I’ve adjusted my plan and do only 500 meters at increased pace with a 300 meter interval jog. My pace is at 4:40 per kilometer so 2:20 for the 500 meter. Yesterday I ran 8K with 6x500 meters increased pace work. I clocked in at 42 minutes for the whole 8K which isn’t a bad time for me.

In the future I hope to continue doing interval training in preparation for my marathon. I can feel that running faster pace is easier but at the end of the week I can also feel the exhaustion of the harder training workouts. This interval training will make me faster for sure.

If there is anyone with suggestion for my interval training or interval training in general leave a reply on this post.

Back on track

Although the weather here in Japan doesn't really seems to be willing to provide me with sunny, dry weather, there has been light and improvement in my marathon training. March and April have been good for me and my weekly training total has risen to 35K. This week due to rain and temperatures around 5 degrees centigrade I was unable to run more than three times to a grand total of 24K. Next weeks forecast seems sunny and warmer so hopefully I can go out about five times to run around 35K total.


I've started to incorporate some speed-training work-outs to my running schedule. One is interval-training where I run 500 meter repeats with 300 meter recovery jogs. The 500 meter increased speed is at about 2:20 pace with a max of 2:40. This month I'll do this once a week at 6x500 meter.

Another speed work-out I've adapted is running a medium distance which is about 8K for me at the moment, and gradually build-up my pace. Starting with the first 2K at 6:00 kilometer pace, then 2K at 5:30 kilometer pace, then 2K at 5:00 kilometer pace, and finally the last 2K at about 4:45 kilometer pace. This provides me with reduced risk of injury since the first 4K are at slower pace than my other training runs and thus proving a longer warm-up without straining. But it still gives me the distance and lubrication for a good work-out. The final 4K really pushes me aerobically and makes my lungs work hard.

Marathon runners diet

What can we say about a marathon runners diet? First of all we know that it is the fuel for every step we take and every mile we run. A specialized diet becomes important only if you train more that 70 miles a week. After that your body will become so seriously depleted of its vitamins and minerals that keeping your health will become a challenge. Carefully plan your daily diet so that you ingest all necessary food from the food pyramid. The marathon runners diet is something discussed in many books and magazines as well as the web. Read up about runners diet as much as you can to avoid injury and common colds as you come closer to your marathon race.

Also you can check out this page: the marathon training diet guide.

So far so good

As I decided back in February (re-thinking my long runs) to drop my long runs and build a solid running base, most of the hurting has been reduced to almost zero. Currently my longest runs are only 8K but I try to go out for a training run every day if possible.

The weather hasn't been cooperating very well. Temperatures have been swinging from 20 to 3 degrees Celsius over the past few weeks, with additional rainy days and windy days. This has led to more non-running days then I would have wanted but I try to ride my stationary bike at home for about 40 minutes to one hour instead.

One more thing I have realized just yesterday while I sat on the (...). Is that most of my training runs I push myself to run as fast as possible or at least run near my marathon race pace. Of course I have great excuses for doing this such as, making sure to get back home in time for dinner so that my wife doesn't throw a fit, or because it is cold outside and the desire to take a hot bath becomes increasingly stronger every ten minutes, or I want to get back home before it gets too dark outside for cars to see me. So I'll try to pay more attention to slow down on recovery runs and to actually take it easy on an easy-run day.

Last ten days of running:

2-Mar	8	44:20
3-Mar	4.3	25:00
5-Mar	6	30:50
8-Mar	6	30:30
10-Mar	4.9	28:00
11-Mar	4.9	25:10
12-Mar	6	33:00
15-Mar	4	24:00
16-Mar	8	42:30
17-Mar	6	32:20

Japan Third - After Kenya and Ethiopia

Here in Japan where almost everyone is lean, there must be something to the food which we can eat without limit and not gain an ounce. The Japanese cuisine and food culture is very rich and is based on centuries of experience. General meals are very diverse and contain a variety of minerals, vitamins and healthy calories. If we fry things it is just for a short wile and often vegetables and fish. The raw fish we eat as Sushi and Sashimi provide a perfect source of low fat protein and omega-3 fatty acids. Sometimes fish are served with soft bones which produce a source of calcium.

I came across a list of yearly rankings of marathons which shows the fastest time run in that year with the runner’s name, country, date and location. When you click on the year you can find a list of the 200 fastest marathon runs in that year. Obviously the list is topped by the Kenyans and Ethiopians but as a good third there are many Japanese runners with great elite level finish times.

I think that the slim bodies of Japanese runners combined with the samurai spirit make a fierce marathon competitor from which I hope to learn many things in the future.

My Profile

As nobody knows who and where I am, it might be time to shine some light on that subject. I’m Dutch, yeah that’s right, Dutch courage, Dutch wife, Dutch oven, etc., I’ve heard it all before and it’s very funny. However, I’ve been living in Japan since 2001 and enjoying the food the people and the culture very much. After former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi left office , I’ve seen a bunch of prime-ministers come and pass and have become increasingly discontent with the Japanese leadership and have lost all interest in the current political agenda. In daily life we can see that the current youth has no sense of direction and has little willingness to improve the situation. But that isn’t really relevant talk on this “RUNNING BLOG” of mine, sorry.

I started running in 2008 after my asthma which I had from birth was cured with ten small pills of homeopathic medicine. My joy was great and naturally became interested in doing sports which I had never been able to do before. I was talked into running by a fellow colleague who had been running for some time. For the first time in my life physical activity didn’t hurt and I actually enjoyed it.

I started running 2 or 3 times a week and saw my stamina build up every week. Then I was encouraged to sign up for a marathon race here in Japan in my own prefecture (Ibaraki, which is about 100K north of Tokyo). From the time I began running to the day of the Kasumigaura marathon was about 7 months. Since the first few moths I didn’t have any kind of base, my training schedule was a little tight. I was able to survive the marathon just under 6 hours.

Now I’m working on building a solid base after injuring myself a couple of times… First I was blessed with a runners knee for which my physician prescribed me with TWO MONTHS of rest and rehabilitative exercises to strengthen the muscles around the knee to give the joints more stability. Everything worked out very fine and I haven’t had any worries since. Another four months into seriously building up my base mileage again I bumped my toes against the door because I was in a hurry to get out and back before the typhoon come into town. My toes were seriously bruised and altogether I was on the sofa with my legs up for another month.

I’m very (overly) motivated to run more marathons and if I can avoid any major injuries I hope to run a 4:00 hour race and eventually a sub 3:30 marathon race. Currently I’m training at a 5:30 Kilometer (8:30 Mile) pace, which would finish me sub 4:00 hours.

Wish me luck!!

Re-thinking my Long runs

In preparation of my mid-April marathon I've been obsessed by regaining my running base which was around 40K a week with 10K and 12K long runs. So after taking the whole month of December off for a silly toe injury, I hoped to just jump back to the point where I left off at week 2 of my intermediate training schedule. However, the 12K long run on Sunday put too much stress on my calves. Aerobically there was no problem and there seemed to be enough stamina to do proper cool-down and take the dog out for a 40min walk later in the day. Taking Mondays off wasn't enough and Tuesdays I ran in pain. I continued repeating week 6 during the month of January and in February I got nervous about my long runs. So I decided to lower mid-week averages and take that as recovery and prepare for increased long runs. I thought that if I could get my long runs to around 30K by the end of March I'd be ready for enduring 42.195 on race day.

Ignoring the 10% rule which is to prevent injury I ran 15K on valentines-day... it still hurts my right calf after one week. I posted my philosophy on the running times forum and got great advice from many kind people. As most, if not all, wrote that it would be better to build a base and forget about marathon racing in April, it gave me courage to give up my strive for running through pain in order to get race-ready. I knew it was difficult, and almost impossible to get physically ready by race-day in April, mentally I was (am) feeling very strong and ready to run the full marathon at any time.

Thanks to all you kind people out there, I have received your kind advise and will turn training back one nudge and contact the April marathon race committee to change my full marathon to a half marathon.

Last 10 days of running:

3-Feb	4.3K	25:30
5-Feb	5.0K	27:30
6-Feb	5.0K	25:00
7-Feb	12.8K	1:14:00
9-Feb	4.0K	21:40
10-Feb	6.0K	32:10
13-Feb	5.4K	28:40
14-Feb	15.0K	1:26:30
16-Feb	5.0K	29:00
17-Feb	8.0K	44:00

Getting back in shape

After a troublesome winter I'm finally trying to get a steady weekly increase which doesn't injure my calf again. I started taking protein supplement after every run and before going to bed on a long run day. The protein helps a lot to repair damaged muscle tissue and ligaments. After long runs and hard runs I either put an ice pack on my knees and calves or while taking a shower I cool my lower legs with running water which is very cold this winter.
Hopefully I can pull out a 10 miler this afternoon. It's been a good four months since I injured my foot and then my calves which forced me to pause my marathon preparation training.
I am getting nervous already for my marathon race in April. I really want to get under 4 hours. My current runs are mostly around 5.30 per kilometer so if i can keep that pace throughout the race I'll be save...