Track and Field Blogs - Jenny Barringer

10:00PM

First, Track stuff. I got out to the track today (finally) to do a workout. It was about a thousand degrees and the sun was beating down like a hammer to an anvil. After I warmed up I ran 4x300 at race pace and then finished up with a few more at sub-racepace. It was a great pre-race sharpening exercise and I felt really good. I was able to keep my recovery very limited between intervals so that indicated to me that the heat wasn't getting to me much. When I finished I did some hurdle practice and then cooled down. Overall, a very very good practice. When I arrived back at the hotel I was one of the very many lucky winners to the drug-testing draw. We had blood drawn and the whole process took a very very long time. Mostly waiting to see the doctor. By the time I got back to the hotel I had missed lunch and missed my meeting with Heather. Oh well.

Now onto the most bizarre part of my day:

I just got back from the most shocking cultural experience of my life and it happened in the most unexpected place too... a department store! I had to get on to write about this because it's so mind blowing to me. I could literally write a book about my experience of just an hour or two in this place but instead I'll hit some of the highlights.

Heather and I went just to waste some time. Not really with any intentions, unlike the other 100,000 Japanese that were all whizzing by us in earnest pursuit. The first floor is all food places. It's not walking into store-fronts though. All of the counters are in one huge area and you flow from one vendor to the next without ever noticing. Everything is on display too. They have 10 manikins to our one and all of the food is set out to represent each little item you can purchase. We found delicately decorated and assembled boxes of food selling for around $5 (you would pay $30 for this at Whole Foods) and then we saw melons and grapes for sale between $50 and $100. I don't blame you if you don't believe me but I promise it's true. Next we went up a level to where there were women's shoes. Heather is a shoe person and OMG, she has been cheated her whole life. There were thousands and thousands of amazing shoes of all different kinds and so many of them were so cute! It wasn't until we asked to try a pair on though that we discovered that in the entire place there is NOTHING close to a women's size 9. Between the language barrier and me trying to tell the salesman that we were just too big, Heather was doubled over in laughter and blushing with embarrassment. We moved on to clothes where I had very similar embarrassing experiences. Basically, everything was too small and too expensive. The two small part was kind of hard to get over though. We're both female distance runners and we often have so much trouble finding things small enough in the states. It felt like we took one of Alice's BIG pills and grew too tall when we were, only days ago, far too small. Later, at about 8pm the store began to close. We had made it all the way to the 12th floor and now had to make our way down. As we went all of the sales men and women stood in the isles and bowed and said goodnight to all of their guests... all 12 floors of them! No cleaning up in a rush to dash out immediately after closing.

The whole experience was amazing and, as long as this is, I only mentioned a few of the highlights. I didn’t mention why I had to put a bag on my head at one point or when we heard the song “I’m working on the railroad” or why we felt so underdressed…. All stories for some to endure at a later time I suppose.