Jean-Paul Hévin: Mendiant Exotique

Last Sunday was my big run and it was a failure: I got a pain on the outside of my left hip and stopped running and walked to the station and came home. Never had a problem there before that I recall, but it was pretty discouraging for any more ambitious runs, which I have had in mind. Perhaps I could have worked out the pain in the field and continued, but I don't have much experience with that and I do have experience with injuries that grounded me for weeks or months, so I decided better safe than sorry. Possible reasons: insufficient warm up (almost always), no specific stretches for that area, although my stretch for avoiding runner's knee might be related if taken to an extreme to stretch the entire left side (and I'm not sure how to just stretch a little of it), since it seems to be either a muscle or a tendon problem (not a joint pain); I was running too fast, being in a hurry from the begin to not finish too late (the 10 km/h that I timed was at 10 km/h, and I didn't feel that I was slowing down); although I've run that far before, I usually have a lot more breaks for stop signals, checking the map, and cake, but I ran mostly along a river path for the first half and rarely stopped and then I was pretty far out, so not that many stop lights and I never got a chance to stop for cake in the 30 km I ran (a few of those unnecessary, as I made a couple wrong turns).

So my plan is to cut down on the running, add some additional stretches, do proper warm-ups and do actual training runs (versus just challenge runs). If that goes well, I'll repeat a long distance that I've already completed successfully before trying to tackle the same route that defeated me this time (but slower, without the wrong turns, and with more breaks). If I still can't make it, then it's time to finally buy a new bicycle for those 100 km dream courses out to the far edges of Tokyo.

Monday, I rested, except for streches, but went to Jean-Paul Hévin because their stuff is so good and there are still so many non-cake things there that I've never had. This time, I tried the Mendiant Exotique (433 yen), which is a dark chocolate disk with fig, ginger, almond, and pistachio. I ate it in one bite and it was excellent, probably better than most cakes, so I don't resent it for costing as much as a piece of cake. However, they do have a great cake this month only (they claimed today) that I want to try again, so I'll probably choose something to match it against this weekend in place of a really long run.