Things to Learn from the Japanese

Read this in a Japanese forum and I am really impressed by this post. As my friend Jay says, " the Japanese man...."

"The Japanese keep no secrets about their running. They are not secretive at all about their training.First of all, they are PATIENT. Right now there are about 100 young ladies in Japan who are running under 33 for 10km and about the same number of guys running under 29. They all have coaches, and they are all aiming to run the marathon, but they will only do so when their coaches allow them to.In Japan, yes, they do run for money and there is NO money in track. It's all in Marathons and Ekidens. Their training is carefully planned out and perfectly executed. When a runner is asked to run a 20km run at 3:30 per km, believe me, it's going to happen, no excuses or complaints, and it will be finished almost exactly 70 minutes later. When a training run is supposed to begin at 11:00am, it is not going to start at 10:59 or 11:01. The Japanese are extremely serious about their training. In Japan you find very little in the way of open spaces to run. For example on that 20km pace run I did with Mizuki last week, we did a double out-and-back on a 5km long narrow path along a river with a bunch of tight turns. Not exactly perfect terrain. I've seen athletes in Japan do 30km tempo runs on a track. I've seen middle school girls doing two hour jogs at EXACTLY (and I mean exactly!) 2:00 per lap, with a staff member recording the time of every lap on a notebook.Most importantly, the Japanese, both men and women are TOUGH. I've done workouts with Yoko Shibui, Reiko Tosa, Masako Chiba and Mizuki Noguchi. When they are running hard in training, it sounds like they are in agony or about to give birth. I can't imagine what they will sound like during the last 8km of a marathon."