The Run Home

I start the new blog for 2010 after what is now the usual Thursday night run home from work, except tonight its a cold, wet night reminiscent of training around the dark streets of Wilmslow, south Manchester before I did my first marathon in 1997.
Whats the difference? Probably not much difference in speed, but tonight I could run past some teenagers sheltering in an underpass without any fear of eggs, stones or bricks being thrown in my direction.
The river banks of the Tsurumi river are dark, but the light from the Morinaga chocolate factory and the pachinko parlour absolutely massive display light up the night sky for miles around. The flats across the river are illuminated especially from the pachinko advertisements, the people living there will never see a starry night sky.

So Japan loves traffic lights, these are especially frequent when cycling in an urban area, but now that I'm timing my training runs they are equally annoying. Tonight I sailed through, and took another few minutes off my best time so far, so 1hr 17.59s for the 16km run home and feeling quite fresh afterwards is where I want to be right about now, with just 7 weeks before the big target event of 2010.