A week ago last Saturday I successfully got in my nineteen-mile training run with the Premier Sports Marathoner in Training (MIT) group, and this last Saturday I successfully got in my twenty-mile run. On Friday I leave for New Orleans, and on Sunday I will run the Mardi Gras Half Marathon. By that time it will already be February, and I’ll only have seven weeks until the Tokyo Marathon in March. In February I have runs of twenty, twenty-two, and twenty-four miles planned, so it will be a busy month. Because nobody else I know is training for the Tokyo Marathon, I’ve had to run a lot of miles by myself so far. I expect that will be the case in February as well.

Tags: marathon, marathons, Tokyo Marathon, Mardi Gras Half Marathon, running

Recently I saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire. It was very good. Also, click here to read my favorite news article about yesterday’s events. After reading the article, you may be wondering what the shaka sign is. This is from Wikipedia:

The "shaka" sign is a common greeting gesture. It is often associated with Hawaii and sports such as surfing, kitesurfing, skateboarding, skimboarding, snowboarding and skydiving. It consists of extending the thumb and smallest finger while keeping the three middle fingers curled, and raising the hand as in salutation with the back of the hand facing the person that is being greeted; sometimes the hand is rotated back and forth to emphasize the sign. Hawaiian locals use the shaka for various meanings, like "all right", "cool", "smooth", etc.

I got a big smile on my face when I read that news article.

Tags: Slumdog Millionaire, shaka, shaka sign

Last weekend I ran seventeen miles with the Premier Sports Marathoner in Training (MIT) group, and this Saturday morning I’m scheduled to run nineteen miles. The low temperature on Friday night is expected to be one degree Fahrenheit, so it’s going to be a little bit chilly on Saturday morning. A week from this Saturday I’m scheduled to run twenty miles, and the week after that I’ll be in New Orleans to run the Mardi Gras Half Marathon as a training run for the Tokyo Marathon in March. With all the cold weather here in Ohio, I’m sure looking forward to going down to New Orleans to run 13.1 miles in a short-sleeve shirt and shorts.

Tags: marathon, marathons, Tokyo Marathon, Mardi Gras Half Marathon, running

I recently finished reading the novel Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, and now I’m reading Bowerman and the Men of Oregon by Kenny Moore. Bowerman and the Men of Oregon is the biography of Bill Bowerman, the late track coach at the University of Oregon. It’s a little bit dense in that it contains a lot of facts and figures (such as this person ran this time in this year and that person ran that time in that year), but it gets really interesting when it talks about how Bowerman helped found the company Nike and how he helped launch the running boom among everyday people in the United States. In fact, it could be argued that without Bill Bowerman, I would never have taken up marathon running. Thanks, Bill!

Tags: book, books, Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami, Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, Kenny Moore

I just finished running sixteen miles with the Premier Sports Marathoner in Training (MIT) group. I took a hard fall on some ice a couple weeks ago, and my shoulder and hip have been a little sore because of it, but luckily they don’t bother me when I’m running. Also, this week I purchased my Japan Rail Pass for the Tokyo Marathon. Because of the current exchange rate (about ninety-one yen to the dollar), it was pretty expensive, but it will give me unlimited access to all public transportation provided by Japan Railways (JR) during my time in Japan. The Tokyo Marathon is now just two-and-a-half months away, so I have some very long runs coming up in the near future. Gambarimasu! (Translation: I’ll do my best!)

Tags: marathon, marathons, Tokyo Marathon, running, Japan Rail Pass