Step by step, mile by mile

Beware of the "Eugene Monster Kick"!

Glad to see you are running again. Hope you won't have any more problems with your calves.

By the way, I took your advice and made my blog public again.

I know, I already put you back in my favorite blogs list! When does you ekiden season range from? If it's in the fall like cross country in the U.S. I bet you could get in some really solid base training this summer if you choose to. That is, if you have a summer break like us.

Our ekiden season here is in the fall. I am looking forward to it. We have a lot of girls on the distance group and there are only five girls to an ekiden team. We have on A team. That would be like a varsity team. Then we have a B team and also a couple of C teams. It will be very difficult to make the A team. There is only one spot open now, and it is a 5000 meter spot. The girl on our team last year graduated but she could run 16:14 for 5K. I would also probably have to be able to run around that time to fill that spot because there are so many fast girls on the team. It is going to be very competitive.

My plan right now is to increase my mileage and build up my base. I found from the track season that I am really lacking now in Aerobic fitness. I plan to do this foundation building until the end of June or middle of July. I will be going to Seattle in July during our summer break, and fiddy from the blog has told me about his running club in Seattle. I hope to train there for a few weeks while I am there. They have a really good coach and some very fast runners. By the time I get back to Japan in August out ream will have started training. I need to be in good running condition by then.

So to change the subject, you said you were going to run in the heat to burn more calories. Is it true that you burn more calories in the heat? I need to lose some weight. After my injuries I gained a lot of weight. Some of the weight has been due to physical changes that I have no control over, but the other is just extra baggage that I need to get rid of. I weigh 7 kg more now than when I was running my fastest times. I need to lose the majority of that and get back down to a good racing weight. Does running in the heat really burn more calories?

it does, but some would call it risky because it's easy to overexert yourself. When I do run in the hotter parts of the day, I make sure to hydrate well and that I'm ready to stop the run early if my body says so. However, with base mileage, there's a good chance you'll lose the weight on your own just from running. I've found at around 60 miles a week or less you'll lose weight as long as you have an alright diet, 60-80 a week and you won't really gain weight no matter what you're eating, and with 80 or above you'll lose weight regardless of your diet, at least while you're young. As I understand as you grow older it becomes harder to shed weight/maintain. The idea is at high mileage your body becomes a "furnace" - burning whatever you put into it for energy for the next run.

The important thing to know is you shouldn't worry about the weight too much, running will probably burn it off on its own. it's just about the best exercise to burn calories out there, I wouldn't worry too much about trying to add components to the run just to lose weight. Heat training, on the other hand...

I'm sure you'll have a great time in Seattle, fiddy and allie are excellent runners and I'm excited for you to learn from all the veteran runners of the club. I'm sure you'll have lots of questions and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to answer, and hopefully they can give you some insight on running close to 16:00 for 5k.

We had one race in cross country that was similar to ekiden - it was called grass relays - it was an anomaly in that our top 5 varsity members each ran 2 miles with a baton on this loop. It had lots of small haybales to hurdle and it was very fun to do.

Let me know if you have any questions about training! I'm no coach but I'd love to do anything I can to help you get on that A team :-) I'll be cheering for you all summer!