4/30/2009

Running around the Imperial Palace

Mecca, a place which an activity or interest is centered, for Tokyoite casual runners (joggers) is the Imperial Palace. Of course, we, general populations, are not allowed to get into the palace. I mean it a round run around the palace.
The run distance is about 5km, that is 3.1 miles, and theoretically no traffic signals which force runners to stop over.

Its scenery is very nice as depicted below.



I and my friend, Tam, tried to get there on April 28th. That was my first run around the palace. I jumped out from Tameike-sannoh office at 5:20M as soon as the last business meeting was finished. There are two runner's stations.
One is near Jimbo-cho station and the other is located at Koujimachi station.
See http://runsta.jp/ for further information, unfortunately in Japanese.

We joined at Jimbo-cho runner's station (3-11-1-1F Kanda Jimbo-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. TEL: 03-3264-0089), and payed JPY700, with which we used a dressing and shower room and a locker.
Runners’ Station hours of operation will remain:
Monday: not available (Koujimachi station is open)
Tuesday-Thursday: 7am-20pm
Saturday:8am-20pm
Sunday: 8am-18pm

Note that we might have an alternative, which is to chose a public bath which costs JPY400. I heard beforehand that the bath is always busy and clouded by runners because of its high cost performance.

We started running at 18:07pm (according my nike+ipod system) from Kitano-maru park. The course was counter-clockwise as most of runners take.
Nice cool April weather welcomed us and that beautiful experience lasted 25 minutes or so.
Here is my record from the nike+ipod logging system.



According to Wikipedia, the distinction between running and jogging is the speed, where it is defining jogging as running slower than 6 mph (10 minute per mile pace, 10 km/h, 6 min/km). My run was slightly faster than 5min/km, and thus I was a runner on that day.

No comments: