This morning we started the day early, preparing ourselves for a huge day ahead. We had already booked a pub crawl for tonight yesterday, which would take us late into the night, and I had promised that I would do parkrun in the morning, starting my day early. My alarm went off at 6am, I was not ready. Alas though I pulled myself out of bed and was greeted by an already awake James who said he’d be joining me for parkrun.
It was an adventure to get to parkrun, being the closest event was an hour train away so we had to get up and ready early. I got dressed, putting on some warm clothes as I had learnt to do from yesterday but was not prepared for just how cold it was. When we stepped outside it was 3 degrees and let me tell you I felt it. I was wearing 2 jumpers, one of them a puffer jacket I bought from ユニクロ yesterday, but this was not enough I was still freezing.
We ventured for the train station, through the freezing weather, regretting our decision to get up this early and go for a run but we had already made it this far and promised that we would go.
By the time we made it there, we had to walk for a bit to get to the start line, and there was some construction which meant we had to make a detour. We checked the weather again and it had warmed up by 1 degree and was now 4 degrees. Far too cold to be running! We got there just before they had started the introduction speech and then stripped off our layers to just a tshirt and shorts. I wish I had thought ahead and bought some longer running clothes, or even just some gloves would have helped.
When the countdown started I figured I would warm up through running and the cold may not be that bad, I remembered back to previous runs I had done in the cold and found that I could run faster because I was able to cool off quicker and the only limitation on my running was my physical performance and not environmental issues so I was somewhat excited to be able to run fast.
Through the run I found myself being colder than my running was warming me up and I started to feel my fingers and cheeks absolutely freezing. I pushed through, despite conditions, and felt pretty good about how I was tracking for time. I had started off at a more reasonable pace but as I felt that I could push myself I managed to go faster and faster. James had left me for the last 500 metres and left me in the dust.
I crossed the line and stopped my watch, displaying a time of 26:44. I was pretty happy with this result and went and checked my previous parkrun pb and my time then was 26:42, I then wondered how the event timings would turn out and maybe I could lose a couple of seconds between discrepancies of the different timings.
I quickly put my warm clothes back on and we headed to train station to head back to devhouse and meet the rest of the group. Along the way we received our parkrun results and they had recorded a time of 26:42, exactly the same as my previous pb, I was pretty happy with this.
When we headed everyone else was up and awake and head breakfast to prepare themselves for another day. We starting planning our day ahead and figuring out some plans. Some of the group wanted to head out to go to a Pokemon centre and get some udon for lunch. In figuring out my running plan for the week, and being aware that we were going on a pub crawl tonight and I may not be able to do my long run tomorrow, I opted to do a long-ish run instead today and so decided that instead of joining them I would go on a half marathon run instead.
When everyone was ready we all headed downstairs and then walked until parted ways, myself going to where I wanted to start my run, and everyone else headed to the train station.
I had mapped out a route that would take me to the imperial palace, I would do 3 laps there, and then run back, which would add up to a half marathon almost exactly. I had tried to plan a run that would minimise stops at red lights, and the route I had mapped would have only the first and last couple of kms with stops, the middle ~15 would be non-stop, ideally.
I headed off, preparing for a few stops along the way which allowed me to run at a slightly quicker pace because I would have time between runs to cool down and breathe for a second. I ran to the start point of the imperial palace and began to run the running loop they have there, preparing myself to run 15kms without stoppping.
I was quickly stopped by the police when I began running that loop though! I think there may have been an event on today, but there were not allowing running or cycling within the palace today. I then had to do the walk of shame out of the palace and back to streets where I could get back to my run.
This would mean that the rest of my run would have to be stop start, but I figured I could use this time to see some sights within Tokyo and go for a bit of a tour around the city, eventually naming the run on strava “Tokyo Tour”, and especially get to see where tourists may not normally go and see some ordinary places which I think are interesting to see.
I made it back to devhouse at the final end of my half marathon, happy that I had completed a big loop of Tokyo and done some sight seeing along the way. I was able to keep a pretty good pace as I had to keep stoppping along the way, and when I checked my watch I had spend almost half an hour stopped at lights over the 2 and a half hours.
I ducked into the nearby 7-eleven to grab myself some recovery snacks and drinks and went back to devhouse to get some rest. Not long after the rest of the group had returned from their adventure so we started to plan out the rest of the day. Knowing we had a big night ahead of us with the pub crawl, and I had just done 2 runs prior, both big and fast runs, we decided that everyone getting a mid afternoon nap was the best idea so we all headed to bed for a few hours.
I managed to get about a half an hour nap, plenty to get me through the day. We got dressed and ready and headed to the tatami room to have a little ceremony the celebrate the devhouse and get ourselves ready for the night.
We headed out for the pub crawl, though while we were all going through the train stations I had some trouble tapping on and going through the gates at the first station and was promptly bullied by Damian because I had previously bullied him about buying a physical card and argued that iPhones were better because we could create and load our Suica card entirely on the phone, and could even do this before we left Australia.
Despite this I had apparently not properly gone through the gates and when we got to the other station I could not leave because I hadn’t touched on. I had to go and talk to one of the attendants which was quite embarrassing where they manually charged my card and let me through.
Next stop was the first stop in the pub crawl, where the event would be starting and we would meet the host. When we arrived we had let the host know it was Bailey’s birthday today (it wasn’t) so that he could receive some special treatment. We were told that at the second bar there would be a surprise, we were excited. We had a couple drinks here while waiting for everyone on the pub crawl to arrive and also received some free shots along the way.
We were excited before heading to the second bar, knowing we were in for a surprise, unsure of what it would be. We had some more drinks here, and when Andrew, the pub crawl host, turned down the music and started talking we knew we were in for a treat. He got the crowd rowdy and began calling some people into the middle, calling one random person, then another person, then the finale, Bailey was called up.
We knew what we were about to witness would be thrilling. When he was up there, we sang happy birthday for him, and then he was invited to get down on his knees for beer bong. They poured in some beer, and added shot after shot of vodka on top, disgusting, but just getting him ready for an even bigger night.
After the antics of the birthday boy we headed to the next bar and had some more drinks there. At some point again Andrew had turned down the music and invited some people onto the stage. To everyone in our group’s surprise James had been called onto stage, we were not expecting this at all and made us even more excited for what would happen. He had to get up there and sing some songs, we thought this was hilarious.
Headed for the last stop for the night, the club. Knowing the trains stop running around midnight we had to make the decision to either leave just before then, or else we would have to stay until the first train runs at 5am. Obviously the choice was made to wait for the first train.
Drink after drink was consumed, and devhouse members started dropping off one by one making their way home through Ubers or just walking home. As a strong man I was strong on waiting for first train so I was not deterred by this and stayed until lights on and we were made to leave.
I caught the train home and on the walk home stopped into a FamilyMart to get myself one more drink, a meal to get me through the night, and an iced coffee for the morning. I quickly collapsed into bed and lights were out stat.