Week 68 May 19 - 25, 2014

Not many pictures this week.  Every Tuesday we have a Japanese class at the local YMCA in downtown Kumamoto.  Here is a picture of the entrance.  Our teacher claims to have only learned English through High School, but her knowledge of speaking and even detailed grammar is very good.

Here is a typical 5K run that I do on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  The chart if very cool as you can easily pick out the biking to and from with the higher speeds, and many stops/slow downs due to traveling in a busy urban area.  You also easily pick out the 5 minute warm up and cool downs which have a lower speed than the running time in between them.

And here is the map of the course.  Our apartment is the upper right end of the red route marker.  The baseball park with the running course around it is at the lower, left.

Using my bike garmin I can collect all this data.  I am now trying to improve my pace.  Here is the pace chart by lap.  The course requires 8 laps for  5K.

		Time	Dist. Mi	Pace mph	Pace m/mi	Dist. Km
1		03:46.7	0.38	6.1	9.84	0.61
2		03:56.2	0.38	5.9	10.17	0.61
3		03:45.2	0.38	6.1	9.84	0.61
4		03:50.1	0.39	6.1	9.84	0.63
5		03:46.2	0.39	6.3	9.52	0.63
6		03:52.3	0.39	6.1	9.84	0.63
7		03:51.8	0.39	6.1	9.84	0.63
8		03:44.0	0.39	6.3	9.52	0.63
		30:32.5	3.09	6.13	9.80	4.97

The overall pace was 9.8 minutes per mile.  The best lap was 5 and 8 at 9.52 min/mi.  It use to be that I would always slow down in the middle laps so I am trying to improve them, while keeping my attempt to go faster on the last two laps.

Saturday was a trip to the temple which is always a wonderful experience.

The end of another wonderful spring week in Kumamto Japan.