Unfortunately I left my mobile at home. Should have had it with me and taken a couple of good shots of the Japanese long distance runners I met on the “Eläintarha” track today. I was there to do my 10 x 1000m. They were preparing for the 5000m race in Lappeenranta on Sunday, June 12.
The track is a good 3km warm up distance away. I arrived there and normlly it’s me looking quite professional yellow-black in this seasons Adidas colors with my Haile shoes and a black Adidas shorts I got me about 7 years ago. But this time there was a crowd of 8 - 10 real runners sitting around on the stands and just changing. All had yellow black combinations and wore Haile shoes. I could hide in the masses except, well, I was two heads taller and had at least 20kg more on the ribs. This much about using a crowd of real long distancers as a camouflage…
After some small chit chat with those guys from Tokyo and asking what they had in mind I heard that they go for some 1000ers and shorter stuff to prepare for the “Elite meeting” in Lappeenranta on Sunday. First I thought I could hang in with the 1000m intervals, some motivation from training partners is always welcome. Then I understood that they gonna do theirs in 2:45min, hm this much motivation might just be too much. Of course, in the end I couldn’t resist. I waited at the starting line of my 1000m interval run until one of them came storming along and accelerated to stay behind the guy, breathe down his neck to give him a run for his money (so to say). Damn, he was worth it, he left me behind after 250m. But it felt quite cool.
From the Lappeenranta event booklet the guys were:
Yusei Nakao, 5000m, PB 13:31,81
Satoru Kitamura, 5000m, PB 13:40,98
Seigo Ikekami, 5000m, PB 13:46,47
Naoki Okamoto, 5000m, PB 13:58,21
Suehiro Ishikawa, 5000m, no PB mentioned
Yasunori Murakami, 1500m, PB 3:38,90
Yuki Matsuoka, 1500m, PB 3:43,84
Yuki Sato, 1500m, PB 3:45,07
My own series was not so cool. 8 x 1000m in the end, 3:30min on average. Has previously been better. The good thing, with pushing out as hard as possible a 3:26min was possible as eighth and last run and the heart rate went up to 180bpm again, right direction.
Tags: interval training, real runners
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