Run Like An Indian

Sometimes you just can’t get a break. There is always a roadblock, an inconvenience when looking at maintaining a healthy me. Yes, I’m still going after that Last 10 Pounds, it’s just a bit more difficult here in Japan.

Besides my job duties out of Kakegawa, I will also be traveling to Osaka to support our client. As I had mentioned in an earlier blog, I had joined the K-Fit gym in Kakegawa and I am using the hotel gym in Osaka. Both of these gyms have tiny, tiny free weight areas. Both are equipped with a basic dumbbell set (up to 30kg) a 45 pound bar, a smith, a cable machine and various benches. The Kakegawa gym has an addition bench press rack. Neither of these gyms includes a power or squat rack. The good news is, both of the free weight areas are rarely visited; it looks like my Japanese friends like the isolation machines. I see them in line for the leg press, leg extension, leg curl, peck deck, back extension, etc… machines on a regular basis.

With the extra bar at the two gyms I can keep up progress on dead lifts and actually complete some decent bar bell hack squats. This keeps the majority of my workouts away from the Smith machine. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against a Smith, I just find them terribly uncomfortable for squats and deads. For squats, I could do a clean and run that into front squats, but my cleans are pretty weak as compared to just picking up a loaded bar. So deads and hacks will make up the basis of my leg work.

More on Daily Cardio…….

For cardio, I am running outside on a daily basis. In Kakegawa, I’m still running ‘Split 20’s’ 6 days a week; outside. I was looking forward to some treadmill time at the hotel in Osaka. However, the hotel gym doesn’t open until 6:30. By then I need to be out the door for breakfast to make the train to the jobsite. So besides running through the Japanese countryside at 4:30 in the morning, I also get a 4:30 am running tour of downtown Osaka, a city of 8.8 million. And my city runs are time limited; no more than 35 minutes. So I am completing short tempo runs, 10 minute warm up jog, 20 minutes at 10 min/mile pace and a 5 minute ‘slog’ cool down. With these, I can generally get a 5K run.

It is getting quite cold here in southern Japan and in Kakegawa I’m wearing tights and warm ups. In fact these last few runs I have included a light set of gloves. In Osaka, because of the stored heat from the city buildings, I can still run in shorts with a light jacket. Hopefully that won’t change through the winter.

I have not done this much outside running since 2006. I feel good after the runs, but the first 5 minutes in the cold really sucks (and always has). In Taiwan and Beijing, I had access to inside treadmills and stationary bikes 24/7 and I was on one or the other every morning for the last year and a half. I made only 1 outside run during my entire Taiwan stay. The inside areas were usually at 80 to 90°F and now I’m running at temperatures below 40°F. However, I’m manning up, and getting the benefit.

Since 2006, 99.9% of my outside runs have been captured on a Garmin Forerunner 301 GPS. I can think of only one or two runs where I did not have this little wrist mounted GPS. There are over 533 miles logged in 93 hours, 76,847 total calories burned. The last 150 miles worth of data is from Japan. WOW!!! That’s 28% of the total.

It’s fun to look through all of that data and try to remember the areas that I ran through, Kind of like looking at old photo albums. There are runs logged in from Washington, Texas, New Mexico, New York, the one in Taiwan. It now includes the runs completed in Japan. Basically, through 2007 it looks like I made two 5k runs per week. Then I slacked off to a single Saturday 5k from 2008. Only on business trips that lasted a week or more do I see more than a single outside run in any given week. Now this does not include all of the inside cardio completed; mega hours on treadmills, rowing machines, stationary bikes, elipticals, ski machines, etc…

So how much outside cardio am I getting in? For the Split 20’s, I am covering 4 to 4.75 miles per run. Six runs per week comes out the approximately 25 to 27 miles/week. And in Osaka, I’m hitting 2.75 to 3 miles per run or 15 miles per week. Now the last time I tried to up my cardio, I ended up nursing a sore foot; Plantar Fasciitis - see the blog entry ‘Injury and Denial’. So after 13 weeks of completing a 25 and 15 mile per week cycle, why haven’t I succumbed to injury? Is it a better plan, a slower pace, a walking recovery between bouts? I think the answer is; even though I upped the Frequency and the Duration, I have scaled way back on the Intensity. I’ve also paid attention to my own advice; run ‘gently’, a bit ‘flat footed’; I call it ‘Run Like an Indian’. If anyone has ever read the ‘Leatherstocking Tails’ by James Fenimore Cooper, e.g. Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, etc…, there are several passages that describes how Iroquois Indian Warriors ran softly and quietly through the forest. When I’m on a run, I try to practice that; ‘Run Softly’. It may help, then again, in another couple of weeks…………… Plantar Fasciitis. We’ll see.

The moral of the story is that I am adapting to a new set of circumstances, I have not dropped my weight training schedule and have kept up a cardio schedule that for me is significant. Lift heavy, run far and jump high is my plan to stay in control of that Last 10 Pounds.

MMJennings