Thursday, December 31, 2015

Live with Your Limitation

Earlier today I did 1 K by seven set interval training.

What you do is basically you run 1 k in 4 minutes, and repeat it seven times with a two-minute rest between sets.

But the standard above is for accomplished runners. As for me, 4 minutes is ideal, but not always possible. I aim for it, but usually settle at much worse times.

The first couple of sets are easy, but from the third set you find yourself quickly running out of glycogen, muscle's main energy source.

So the third set though fifth or sixth set are the toughest. Once you have run out of glycogen, you must tap your fat reserve for energy, but it takes time.

Finally around the last set, you feel you are recovering your energy, and find yourself ready to give yourself that last spurt.

Anyhow, seeing your time get worse and worse each time around is not a very pleasant experience. You almost feel like quitting. But I know you would feel even shittier if you did.
So you just live with your deteriorated times, grit your teeth, and bear.  Because if you do, no matter how shitty some of your times were, you are blessed with a tremendous feeling of joy, almost like exhilaration when you complete the regimen.  And the bad times are already forgotten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1XGvR9Mzh8


Saturday, December 26, 2015

No Music, No Life

Music is an important element of my life. And I believe it is to you too. When I feel tired, I listen to my favorite music, and beautiful melody gently touches my nerves that are aroused from the hustle and bustle of the busy day.

Year 2015 is almost over. I believe many of you are on winter break. I am too. I was putting my legs up and watching TV in the living room when pianist Mr. Nobuyuki Tujii's program was on. I watched it. And I was moved. He completely swept me off my feet.

He played Piano Concerto No. 3 by Sergey Prokofiev. The music is characterized with dynamic pitch movement, and fast note movement. At a point it made me visualize a wide sunset view of no hope during the time of World War in the first half of the 20th century.

The Concerto also involves highly difficult finger movements that command extreme dexterity, reminiscent of Franz Liszt. But Mr. Tsujii played it like a small child would handle his familiar toy.
His performance was a sheer amazement. He was as accurate as Terminator. But yet he was completely one with the dynamic emotional flow of the music. His professional accuracy drew out the best out of the Vienna Philharmonic. In fact, the orchestra appeared a bit nervous, though obviously they enjoyed performing with the genius pianist. I presume it was because his level of professional accomplishment was so high that they felt pressured to be the best they could be in order to match his level. I feel very proud that someone from my own country commands a huge respect from such a prestigious orchestra.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Hill Sprint (坂道ダッシュ)

With only 29 days remaining before a half marathon next January
I hit the road this morning to cover approximately 8 k in and around my town.
The course is rich in undulations, and perfect for building glutes and thighs. 
Also, since you resist gravity when you run up hills, you get to burn more calories
than you normally do when you go down a flat road.
At one point along the course there is a pretty steep hill
that stretches for about 200 to 210 m.
This is where I do hill sprints.
I run up it, taking between 48 to 50 seconds, and do it five sets.
When coming down, I slow down for a brief recovery, spending nearly twice as much time
as when running up.
My cardiovascular capacity is stretched to max when I do it.
I feel like all of my entire internal liquid, be it blood or else, 
makes a full circle minimum ten times!
Literally, I feel like a new man when I complete the regimen.
I need a good rest before I become strong enough again to do another major running training,
so I'll probably give myself a full rest tomorrow.
And hopefully this coming Sunday, which is Dec. 27,
I would like to go for a long slow run to cover more than 20 k.  

Monday, December 14, 2015

Monday NIght Cardio Torture: Interval Training 1 K × 7 Sets

In exactly 41 days from today Sansurp Chiba Marine Marathon takes place in Makuhari, Chiba Prefecture. I'm running half marathon. I did interval training to improve speed.

Interval training consists of two components:
1) A one kilometer run at a faster pace than your usual running pace
2) A two-minute slow jog

1) and 2) makes up one set. And you repeat it until you hit seven sets, except that 2) is often skipped after the seventh 1 k fast run.

Today's result is as follows:

Round 1: 4:06
Jog: 2:00
Round 2: 4:02
Jog: 2:00
Round 3: 4:10
Jog: 3:00
Round 4: 4:11
Jog: 2:30
Round 5: 4:26
Jog: 2:30
Round 6: 4:26
Jog: 2:00 
Round 7: 4:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NosuyJe5pdU&feature=youtu.be

As you can see, I rested longer after the third round. This is because breathing became difficult,
and I needed longer for recovery. In the past I would push myself, but these days I don't. It's important to slowly raise the level of intensity. Otherwise, you could meet unconscious resistance later, and motivation can go down. In endurance sports such as long-distance running, training consistently over a long period of time is more important than doing something very challenging once and taking a long break until doing another big one. Therefore, keeping the level of challenge at a manageable level is vitally important.

Anyhow, after taking a little longer jogging break three times, I felt I was strong enough to push myself, so I cut the jogging to two minutes again, and did my best to improve my time from the previous two sets. I reached the goal ten seconds earlier, and today's training was over.

I am going to give myself a complete rest on Tuesday. And hopefully on Wednesday morning if I get up early enough, I would like to go for a one-hour jog. If I don't, I'll hit the road after coming home from work.

I am going to combine interval training and long distance jogging like until the race in January. At some point along the way I would like to run 30 k once or twice, because I am running a full marathon in Tateyama, Chiba at the end of next January, a week after Sansupo Chiba Marine Marathon. There isn't much time to do any major training between the two races, so I am hoping to do some good endurance training before it's too late. I guess during winter vacation is probably the best timing as when I have more free time than usual. 

Friday, December 11, 2015

Surprise Teacher

I saw a program on NHK this morning. It's called Surprise Sensei, or Surprise Teacher.
What it does is that a well-known professional in a certain field walks up to a stranger and gives advice.
This morning the surprise teacher was two-time Olympic medalist Ms. Yumi Arimori.
She talked to three runners who were jogging around the Imperial Place.

The first runner she talked to was a beginner.
Her biggest concern was that she had never taken any lesson from anybody
ever since she took up jogging,
so she wasn't sure whether her running form was good or not.
Ms. Arimori's advice was simple.
She said, "Start with walking. Then slowly speed up. That's the best form."
What a great piece of advice! You don't have to be a genius to follow that advice.

The second runner shared her mental concern with Ms. Arimori.
The runner said, "Take a full marathon, for example,
especially with 5 more k or so remaining, pain often becomes unbearable,
and I don't know how to deal with that feeling."
Ms. Arimori's advice was this: "Always look on the bright side.
In your case, try to focus on the 37 k you have already covered,
and feel positive about it, instead of focusing on the remaining 5."
Again, her advice was simple, and can easily be put into practice.

The last runner she talked to was a male. He had had his right knee
seriously injured, and had even had it operated.
Though he is pain-free now, but somewhere in his mind he had a concern
that knee pain might be back again.
Ms. Arimori demonstrated the kind of running form
that tends to lead to knee injury.
It was a hopping kind of running form, and the landing shock is great.
She then demonstrated another running form that creates much smaller landing shock.
In other words, she showed by examples.

Although the concerns shared by all three runners were different,
all of them universal are to almost all runners.
So being a runner myself, I learned a lot from Ms. Arimori's advice.

Her advice was simple, easy to understand, and easily doable.
I thought she was a great surprise teacher.


Thursday, December 10, 2015

Morning Exercise

Four days after the half marathon in Hadano, the leg pain was almost gone, so I decided to go for a short run in the morning. I stuck to my regular forefoot running to continue to strengthen my calves. There's a small park about 1 k from home. I dropped by there to do some lying chin-ups. The main muscles involved in that exercise are lats, forearms, and bi-ceps, and they are not significantly relevant to running, but I did it to quickly elevate my heart rates, and to use up the glycogen stored up in my body, so that it would tap my fat reserve in order to create energy to sustain the running.

When doing lying chin-ups, I extended the concentric phase over four seconds in order to make it more challenging. I originally planned to begin with 12 reps, and then to progressively decrease the number of reps to ten, eight, and eventually to six. But after doing twelve four-second lying pull-ups, my lats were pretty exhausted, so I had to reduce the number to five in my second set, to four in the third, and three in the last.

Quite satisfied that I was able to exhaust myself in a short period of time, I hit the road again and jogged for a while until I reached a slope, where I was going to do hill sprints. It is a pretty steep slope of 200 m. I did five sprints there, and was completely beat after finishing all five.

I, then headed back the same route to home. Instead of going straight home, though, I dropped by the park again to do more lying chin-ups. I did thirty reps in a row, and failed. After that I just slowly ran home, hit a shower, had a piece apple, had a cup of warm soy milk, and left home for work.

I felt great during commute, having a minor dopamine rash.

The exercise took me 36 minutes 18 seconds.
I am planning to combine this type of short by intensive running training consisting of slow jogging and intensive sprints mainly for cardio and for improving on recovery speed on the one hand, and slow and long (10 k~15 k) jogging for endurance before my next race in January. See how it goes.
 

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Hadano Tanzawa Minase River Half Marathon 2015

Hadano Tanzawa Minase River Half Marathon 2015 ended with a net time of 1:49:19, which is significantly worse than my time from the previous year. But nevertheless I am very happy with the result. The following is an explanation of why I feel so. I am going to do it as I give you a chronological explanation of how the race went.
The race started at 8:45 a.m. This is 15 minutes earlier than Year 2014. I don’t see the reason for the change, but it didn’t affect my condition at all. As soon as the race began, runners began to pick up speed. Compared with other major races, this event does not have so many participants. So congestion after the beginning typical of major races is minimum. One this unique abo
ut this race, though, is that you must run the first 5 k within 30 minute of the start. This isn’t so challenging for most accomplished runners, but may be a bit of a challenge for beginners. Anyhow, somewhat because of this time limit, the overall pace of the initial 5 k is generally pretty fast. What makes the first 5 k a bit of a stress is that once you make a full circle around the stadium and hit the regular road, you continue to go up for about 2 k. You can feel your heart rates elevated immediately. At the end of the first uphill there is a turning point, and once you chuck a u ey, you keep on going down for 2 k. This seems easy, but not quite since most runners pick up speed even more, using the momentum gained from going downhill.
Near the 5 k mark there is the first aid station that provides runners with water and sports drink. I usually skip hydrating myself at 5 k, because when the pace is fast, you can get choked if you fail to drink water smoothly. When that happens, your breathing gets distracted, and it isn’t good. So I decided to skip it just as I usually do. But this turned out to be a big mistake!
Right after the first aid station, you take a left across a bridge over the Minase River, and once you have crossed the bridge, the course leads you into a long, and slow uphill slope. Street cheerers are many as you go through a residential area. But as you go on, houses get more and more sparse, and modern residences become replaced with old wooden houses typical of traditional farmers’ houses. From the 5k mark up to around 12.5 k mark, the course is mainly uphill, with only a very short down slope at a couple of places. This is one of the hardest phases of the race. I did my best to save my energy for the latter half, but I was beginning to find it harder to control my body temperature. Ordinarily, I can easily do it by changing the pace, but that day I continued to feel hot even after I took that usual measure. Something was wrong.
Before reaching the 12.5 k where a long and steep downhill was going to begin, I felt pain in my right knee. Assuming that it was psychological, the body’s defense mechanism to shift my attention from my unconscious stress to something physical, I kept saying to myself, “This is only my mind saying, ‘I want to rest’.” It is the kind of pain I was used to as a runner, and I wasn’t so worried about it. But this time no matter how I kept telling myself not to worry about it, the pain would not go away. Once I felt the pain, each kilometer felt much longer than it really was. This phase of the race provides some of the best views of the area, but I had no time to enjoy them. Instead, I found myself constantly talking to myself more. It felt as if the pain had become the center of the universe. After miles of inner talk I finally reached the third highest point of the course, the beginning of the second longest downhill slope. In the previous years, this was the place where I would change to the top gear, but this year I was only careful not to damage my right knee. But fortunately, the pain started subsiding once I started going down. I temporarily felt relieved, but in no time I reached the 14 k mark, where runners once again had to go up. And this time the slope was steeper, and longer than any other in the race. Knee pain was back. And I had to slow down significantly, not only to protect the knee from a complete dysfunction, but my breathing became more difficult, and for the first time in the race I suspected dehydration, because my mouth was so dry. I felt the first minor spasm in my right calf, and decided to stop forefoot running to protect it from completely getting cramped. However, my right thigh now had to stand greater burden to compensate for the lack of shock absorption by the calf. This tired the right thigh fairly quickly. The highest point in the race was now visible. This is the moment when most runners experience a tremendous exhilaration with the prospect of going downhill to the finish from that point on. But I was afraid if my right leg could bear the increasing burden till the top. I put up with the misery of being overtaken by faster runners as I crossed the bridge that led to the 15 k mark. Once I reached there, the third aid station would await. The way across the bridge seemed like forever, but I finally reached the other end, and found myself welcomed by aid crew with cheers. I grabbed two paper cups of water quickly, and drank one cup after another. After finishing up the water, I walked over to one side of the road and stretched my right calf several times, and other sore leg muscles just in case. I wasted almost two minutes there. Soon after hydrating myself, I noticed an immediate change in my physical condition. I felt refreshed, and it seemed like all the internal chemical reactions that had been disrupted by dehydration were back to normal. The pain in the right knee was felt mainly when I was going up, so with the uphill phase being over I had little to worry about between the 15 k mark and the finish. By this time I had completely abandoned forefoot running for fear of getting a cramp again. I accelerated as I ran down the winding down slope. I even overtook some runners who became exhausted from pushing too much when going up. I found a female runner going at a pace similar to mine. I followed her for a few miles. Between 18 and 19 k she started slowing down. So I left her behind, and kept on going all by myself. As I approached the finish, the number of cheerers started growing larger. The idyllic landscape in the middle of the race was nowhere to be seen. By now it had been almost completely replaced with modern houses and large corporate buildings and factories. With 1.5 k remaining, runners going around the stadium came in sight. They were soon to cut the finish line. But I still have a mile to go. The large arch that had “START” on it was visible. That’s where I started off less than two hours before. Shortly before going under the arch, the course took a right into a street that led to the entrance to the stadium. The arch of the finish point was in sight, but to reach there I still had to get into the walking path that surrounded the stadium and to make yet another full circle around the stadium to reach the arch from the opposite side. My mentor Mr. Fujimori and my bilingual companion waved at me as they shouted their cheers. From the way he relaxed, I could tell my mentor had finished the race a while before. The walking path was neatly paved and stylishly colored, a great improvement from the previous year. But these visual merits didn’t do any good in terms of making my job easier. The path was not flat, slightly going up, making it enormously difficult to make that last spurt all runners would dream of. Each step felt as heavy as a 10 kg dumbbell. Breathing felt as difficult as untying a tightly fastened knot. Coordination between my upper and lower body was almost non-existent. Twenty more meters to go. And then ten… I rolled down under the finish arch like a dirty, ill-formed snowball. The race was finally over!!
Mr. Fujimori and my bilingual companion congratulated me with a smile. From the way I finished, and also from a much worse time than originally expected, they knew the race wasn’t easy for me. But now that it’s over, the first thing to do was go straight to the end of the festival space, and get a free bowl of pork soup given to all finishers. The warm, flavorful soup reached every corner of my tired body as I slurp it from the bowl. Locally grown veggies in the soup were just adequately cooked, and entertained my palate.
I was so glad that I completed the race without quitting that I completely forgot about checking my time. For the first time I looked at my watch carefully. It said 1:49:19. It’s as bad as the time for my first half marathon more than 5 years before. But that’s OK. I knew I was out of practice. And my main goal was to see how far I could go by forefoot running in a challenging course such as this one. I put myself to a test, and I went as far as 14 k. And I learned a lesson, too. I know I need more distance training to maintain high performance in the latter half of the race. I also know that I need to be more strategic in terms of hydration.
My next race is a half marathon that takes place in the third week of next January. I am going to go back to the kind of training I used to do before my best performance at the Ohme 30 k Road Race this past February. It is a combination of LSD and interval training. Endurance and speed. These are the key elements of running a long distance race comfortably. Neither one can stand alone. Both are necessary. I am going to manage my time well to schedule both types of training for the race.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

How Time Seems to Fly Faster Each Year

Time flies by quickly. And I feel even more so as the year goes by.
There are a number of theories about how this feeling is brought about.

The first theory is this. When you are two years old, one year is 50% of your entire life.
On the other hand, at Age 50 one year only represents 2%.
That's why it feels shorter.
Makes sense.
Some say this explanation is based on Einstein's theory of relativity.

The second theory is psychological.
According to a university professor in psychology,
one's feeling of time is influenced by the number of events
in a day.
If you pencil in a lot of events in your daily organizer,
the day feels longer.
On the other hand, if you purposelessly spend a day,
the day feels very short.
Experience tells you that it's true.
When you have many exciting events in a day,
you feel you got a lot done at the end of the day.
What makes one feel a day longer may have something to do with
a feeling of fulfillment.

The third theory, which is my original hypothesis, is this.
As you become older, it takes longer for you to recover from fatigue,
both mental and physical.
As a result, the length of the time in which you can be active
becomes shorter.
And our sense of time is probably determined by the length of time
when you are active.
And because your active time becomes shorter as a result of acting,
your time feels shorter.

So is there anything you can do to fight against this increasingly shortening sense of time?
Probably not much.
If Theory No.1 stands, as long as you live,
the length of one year relative to that of your entire life continues to shrink,
so nothing can change it.
Perhaps there a few conscious efforts you can make
regarding No. 2 and No. 3.
As for No. 2, you can try to make plans everyday in order to live purposefully.
Concerning No. 3, you can eat well, exercise regularly, and sleep well
in order to minimize energy loss from unhealthy habits.

Students Questionnaires

A large scale student satisfaction survey was conducted at the beginning of November. And I have just begun to process the questionnaires. They reflect the needs and wants of the students of the English training school I work at. There are quite a few inspiring comments, and I feel very excited to process all the questionnaires for the coming few weeks. I will analyze them once they've been processed, and my analysis then leads to action plans to improve students' satisfaction. That's the most exciting part, and my co-worker and I are going to spend lots of time discussing what's best to do, piloting some tentative ideas, and polishing our final plans. Our new action plans will be announced at the beginning of next January.