Tokyo Marathon

Stephen Owen (stephen.owen@db.com) sent me an email today with the URL for the Tokyo marathon.  Given that I had been thinking about doing a marathon and I love Japan this seemed like a good excuse to travel up to Tokyo. So I signed up

 http://www.tokyo42195.org/index_e.html

 Maybe I can do some skiing too – but that is probably optemistic.

 Oh, and of course, for those of you whom know Richard Owen (richard.owen@barcap.com), Stephen is his brother.

I’ve been a wuss and running inside on the treadmill up until today.  The average temperature and humidity in Singapore is so high that it seemed like a dumb idea to run outdoors.  But its boring running on the treadmill. 

 A colleague of mine told me that when he ran out doors in Singapore his heart rate went through the roof, not through effort of running but through the bodys attempt to shed heat.

 Well this morning I set off from Belmond Green running and walking through some of the expat districts of Singapore.  Eventually I got down to Boat Quay and followed the water line around and back to Little India.

At Little India it started to rain and I was still about 5km away from home so I bought myself a nice cold water and hopped in a taxi to take me home.

So my first outdoor run was 20.05km in about 3 hours (which is really a walk!)

Spent the week in Hong Kong and for penance, every morning after the night before (or was it morning) I felt I needed to try and sweet out the alcohol and burn off the calories.  Hence it was up every morning of the week for a 10km run.  The gym in the Shangri La was very nice with a view out across a walk way. 

 The best thing about the gym was they had about 5 different types of water:

• wather with lemon
• water with apple
• water with pinnaple
• water with strawberry
• water with pear

I think I did about 50km this week over the 5 days.

Although treadmills generally seem to record distance and can take a heart rate, holding the heart rate monitor whilst running is fairly difficult.  Hence I went out and bought the Polar RS200sd.

 Well I think it is the Polar RS200sd which is certainly what I paid for however etched on the back of the watch is only RS200.

 The watch comes with a heart rate strap and a nifty foot pod which together provide distance traveled, hear rate and calories (or how many packets of crisps you can now eat).

Given that the big four zero is approching (in a few years anyway) I made some new year commitments which that I needed to get fit and loose the gut.  So I started running and logging what I was doing on May 29 2007.  My condo in Singapore has a small gym with two tread mills and given the obsence heat outside this is where I began to clock up the km.