Pierre Hermé, Madame Figaro

Got a 12th cake from Pierre Hermé at Isetan, Madame Figaro for 756 yen. It's sort of a fruit cake bottom, with really moist to the point of being almost mousse cake above it covered with meringue. It looks good and it is good, but I don't need this cake particularly, so I'm going to take this shop off my list of great shops and demote them to excellent. They do have several excellent cakes though (as do some other excellent shops), but I don't like everything they have enough that I have to keep trying everything. The chocolate shops have the advantage there, at least with me. The good news, then, is that I only have six great shops left that I need to thoroughly explore (until they disappoint me too often), and then I can finally go back to the great cakes I've found from whatever shop and start comparing them to each other to see which ones I really like.

On the running front, I did my faster speed today rather than tomorrow because it was convenient for my cake plan. I did 8 min at 7-8 min/km, in 4 2-min blocks separated by 1 min walking, and I did 2 km at 6'10'' to 7'/km in six 300- or 400-meter blocks with 100 or 125 meters walking in between. The faster speed was more natural, but I'm working on running long-distance style, leaning forward to fall and catching myself rather than pulling or pushing myself with my leg muscles, and it's not easy to do well, such as without messing up my knees. Didn't have trouble keeping up the pace for that kind of distance, but it was starting to have an impact (so to speak) by the end. Still have 4 km at the slowest pace before I set next week's goals. I'm busy part of the weekend, so I'll have to get right into it Wednesday and Thursday.