Evening Run

I want for a run today in the rain. Usually I wear a hat in the rain because it keeps the rain out of my face and on most of my runs I like to bring some 100 yen coins to buy a drink when I am about 3/4 of the way done because it is so hot in Okinawa.

One problem I have is that most of my shorts have only 1 pocket and when I put more than 1 coin in there I get the clinking of coins. I some times take scotch tape and tape the coins together or saran wrap around them. The saran wrap works well because I can just leave it in the coin pocket and it makes it through the wash fine. (I don't have a drier.)

But will pointed out another not so obvious way to carry coins. You can put them in the headband of your running cap. There is absolutely no bounce and no noise. So today, on a hot, rainy day, I kept 200 yen in my hat.

Will and I ran 10.5 miles in 90 minutes on a course I don't often run. He ran from his apartment to mine and we ran together to Urasoe hill park, to Ojana, and then to his apartment in Aregusuku. I finished up by running back to my apartment. So, it was a loop course but we didn't start at the same place. Not a bad way to go.

Evening Run

Things are looking pretty good as I was able to easily handle this longer run. Will and I met up at a new place for the run; we started at the park by the Kadena Marina and made are way North towards Yomitan.

This turned out to be a really nice run. We first found a river trail park and followed it up a couple of miles before we could not find anymore path. The river trail was surrounded my coral cliffs covered in thick ferns, very cool.



It was getting dark so Will did not want to find more trails and get caught in the dark in the jungle. This is probably a good idea. We did see a farm road near the Kadena ammo dump. We hopped on this trail and followed it. This trail reminded us both of home. Will is from Illinois and I am from Indiana. The farm land had a Midwest feel to it because the sugar cane stalks looked very similar to corn stalks.

I think with a few more runs this could be one of the best courses in Okinawa. We will have to do it again and find just a few more ways to carry out these good trails. We got back from 9.8 miles in 90 minutes.

Evening Run

I took off 3 days because of the return of my leg problem. I believe this time I learned something. During a massage the sports therapist noticed my right leg would not easily rotate inward. He believed that my leg must be facing outward during running. I found this a little hard to believe since I pay allot of attention to my form but I told him I would try to tape my running and show it to him.

During those 3 days I went for several walks and I was paying attention to my walking when I noticed a difference between my right and left feet. I balanced more of my weight to the inside on my right foot than my left. This seemed to be a break through. It fit! Everything could be explained with this and I could tell by shifting my weight outward more that this was giving relief to those overworked muscles.

Saturday I showed up to practice to do a jog and to prove my theory to myself. I got in 5.2 miles easy in 45 minutes on the track and my legs felt fine with the fixed stride.

So, there was no visible problem with my form it was something I was doing that only I could find.

Evening Run

Will and I met for a run after work. We started from the office at building 5 and ran down to the Okinawa Prefectural Park. This is a huge park in the Awase area where the start of the Okinawa Marathon is held.

It was a really nice run on a day with good weather. We found campgrounds in the park which I did not know were there. We ran a loop through the park and ran back up the hill to the office for a nice 8.2 mile run in 70 minutes.

During the evening my leg and knee started hurting in the usual places. This really got me sad and I decided I will need more work before I can return fully to the sport :(

Evening Run

I met up with Will at 4pm. We were both out late last night celebrating Dan's birthday. The funny thing was that Dan didn't show!!!

So that made us throw out doing the long run in the morning. We met up at the usual Sunday run place and decided we needed to go sloooow. For the most part we did just that. We ran an hour out and cut a little off the course to get back in 1:54. Usually this means a 15 mile run but today it was 12.6.