I signed up for this after Namban folks said it was feasible as a day trip. Come to find out it was not, but Geraldine, from Namban, offered me to stay at her cottage up there, despite that she had never met me. Took the Azusa up on Saturday and arrived a bit before 9, Geraldine was kind enough to drive out to pick me up, and was accompanied by another Nambanner, Maya. At her house were two more women, Taeko, a nambanner, and Ruby, Geraldine's 82 year old friend from the UK. It was a pleasant night chatting a bit, and I managed to sleep ok on the thin futon and hard floor.
In the morning, I drank a huge almost one liter shake I had made for the trip. This was too much, as I would find out later with some stomach issues. Also, I had only brought 3 of the stomach pills with me, whereas I usually take at least four.
We got to the race area plenty early, and parked nice and close at a pachinko place. Got in a good warm up, the weather was warmer and more humid than expected with cloud cover that was starting to break. It was a nice enough lake, mainly surrounded by urban area, but some mountains as well that were pretty.
I met up with Paddie and we got in the line up together. There was another guy Richard that Paddie knew and said he was going for sub 1:20. Paddie said he would be happy with anything under 1:25, so I was happy to have someone in the same ballpark as me.
My strategy was to go out hard and just try to push it through all the way. That's what I did, and it hurt right from the beginning. My legs felt a bit stiff and tight, and my gut was bothering me right away. I did the first 3k in under 11:30, which was fast, but close to the target of where I wanted to be. Paddie caught up with me by about 4k, and we hung together for a while. It was my first time running with him, and I was quite surprised by the way he slapped his right foot. Seemed really inefficient, and was surprised that he can run as fast as he does. He pulled ahead as I started to feel worse and wonder if I was going to have a decent race at all. It was good to have him in my sights, though, and so I just focused on that. I meant to take my splits every 3k, but kept missing the markers, so just kept going as fast as my condition allowed. As we got close to the halfway mark I passed Paddie and tried to pull him a long with a fairly feeble, 'C'mon Paddie!'. There was a cool little band at the halfway mark, and there were great people cheering pretty much the whole way. I started to feel better and get a second wind. When I got to about the 16k mark, I started feeling like I was not going to make it without a toilet stop. That big shake I drank and the lack of medicine was taking its toll (despite the 4-5 times I had already crapped before the race...). I tried to hold off a bit, and then could not find a toilet. When there finally was one, there were only about 2k left, and I just decided to see if I could push myself. I was feeling pretty beat, and I knew if I stopped I would lose a lot of momentum.
When we came around the corner and could see the big finish gate, I was pretty excited, as always. I gave it a push about 400 meters out, but couldn't sustain it. There was one guy right with me, and as we got about 100m meters away he tried to overtake me, but I literally gave it a last grunt (and crowd pleasing) push and beat him.
Finished in 1:23:25, beating my old PB by about 1.5 minutes. Was pretty happy with the race, and my legs felt decent.
Got in a good walk around part of the lake on the way to the train station, and stopped for lunch at a little place selling kama meishi which I enjoyed while looking at the lake.
Overall a good race, although a bit far. Would be nice to go up there and stay with the family before and/or after.
No comments:
Post a Comment