Tamako Ekiden et al

The Tamako Ekiden was a fun little race. Not a particularly big ekiden but a good turnout for Namban Rengo with three men's and three women's teams. Congratulations to the women who took the top three spots. However since we were two women short, two of the teams had to have a repeat runner. In spite of this obvious disadvantage, when one of the women was recognized, that team was disqualified. As for the men, my team took second in the intrasquad competition. It was worth it to see Gareth's childlike enthusiasm for their victory. Shoji-san put up some pictures here. (For the non Japanese, the pink box on the upper right will take you to a slide show page. When there click the left of the two buttons on the bottom.)

As for me, I ran my 5.9643 leg in 23:57, not great, not terrible. I just missed going under 4:00/k as I would have liked but it was quite a bit of a hilly course. If it was flatter I would have done it.

Yesterday I had a decent 5 mile run that averaged 7:17/m-4:31/k. Thursday morning is normally a day off for me because I run track workouts with the club on Wednesday nights. But since the ekiden was in the morning I was able to get this workout in.

Finally, today's workout. I wanted to attempt another of my FH workouts. Unfortunately, that is about all I did, attempt it. I certainly didn't complete it. I was going to do the 4x2000 in 7:30 with 60 seconds rest. The first circuit I managed in 7:39, acceptable. After a 90 second rest I went around again but this time in 7:59. Obviously I didn't have it today. Maybe I just don't have it period. I did another after a 2:30 recovery but didn't really push myself, I just wanted to get another one in. That last one was 8:20.

So I've done 3 of the 4 FH workouts over the last 9 days. Two of them not within the specified time parameters. These 4 workouts are meant to be done over the course of a week and then repeated for several weeks! Are they too tough for me? I don't know. I do know that I haven't been running so well since the Tokyo marathon; I still feel sore/tight hamstrings when I run. You'd think I'd be recovered by now though. A couple club mates have even run second marathons since Tokyo. Where will I sit a month from now? Still languishing in my attempts to accomplish this program I've decided upon? Successful in it? On to something more manageable in relation to my current running? I don't know. What I do know is that next week we are going to Hawaii for a little vacation. Perhaps then I'll return refreshed and renewed and ready to tackle FH once again.