Hadano Tanzawa Minase River Half Marathon 2015 ended with a net time of 1:49:19, which is significantly worse than my time from the previous year. But nevertheless I am very happy with the result. The following is an explanation of why I feel so. I am going to do it as I give you a chronological explanation of how the race went.
The race started at 8:45 a.m. This is 15 minutes earlier than Year 2014. I don’t see the reason for the change, but it didn’t affect my condition at all. As soon as the race began, runners began to pick up speed. Compared with other major races, this event does not have so many participants. So congestion after the beginning typical of major races is minimum. One this unique abo
ut this race, though, is that you must run the first 5 k within 30 minute of the start. This isn’t so challenging for most accomplished runners, but may be a bit of a challenge for beginners. Anyhow, somewhat because of this time limit, the overall pace of the initial 5 k is generally pretty fast. What makes the first 5 k a bit of a stress is that once you make a full circle around the stadium and hit the regular road, you continue to go up for about 2 k. You can feel your heart rates elevated immediately. At the end of the first uphill there is a turning point, and once you chuck a u ey, you keep on going down for 2 k. This seems easy, but not quite since most runners pick up speed even more, using the momentum gained from going downhill.
Near the 5 k mark there is the first aid station that provides runners with water and sports drink. I usually skip hydrating myself at 5 k, because when the pace is fast, you can get choked if you fail to drink water smoothly. When that happens, your breathing gets distracted, and it isn’t good. So I decided to skip it just as I usually do. But this turned out to be a big mistake!
Right after the first aid station, you take a left across a bridge over the Minase River, and once you have crossed the bridge, the course leads you into a long, and slow uphill slope. Street cheerers are many as you go through a residential area. But as you go on, houses get more and more sparse, and modern residences become replaced with old wooden houses typical of traditional farmers’ houses. From the 5k mark up to around 12.5 k mark, the course is mainly uphill, with only a very short down slope at a couple of places. This is one of the hardest phases of the race. I did my best to save my energy for the latter half, but I was beginning to find it harder to control my body temperature. Ordinarily, I can easily do it by changing the pace, but that day I continued to feel hot even after I took that usual measure. Something was wrong.
Before reaching the 12.5 k where a long and steep downhill was going to begin, I felt pain in my right knee. Assuming that it was psychological, the body’s defense mechanism to shift my attention from my unconscious stress to something physical, I kept saying to myself, “This is only my mind saying, ‘I want to rest’.” It is the kind of pain I was used to as a runner, and I wasn’t so worried about it. But this time no matter how I kept telling myself not to worry about it, the pain would not go away. Once I felt the pain, each kilometer felt much longer than it really was. This phase of the race provides some of the best views of the area, but I had no time to enjoy them. Instead, I found myself constantly talking to myself more. It felt as if the pain had become the center of the universe. After miles of inner talk I finally reached the third highest point of the course, the beginning of the second longest downhill slope. In the previous years, this was the place where I would change to the top gear, but this year I was only careful not to damage my right knee. But fortunately, the pain started subsiding once I started going down. I temporarily felt relieved, but in no time I reached the 14 k mark, where runners once again had to go up. And this time the slope was steeper, and longer than any other in the race. Knee pain was back. And I had to slow down significantly, not only to protect the knee from a complete dysfunction, but my breathing became more difficult, and for the first time in the race I suspected dehydration, because my mouth was so dry. I felt the first minor spasm in my right calf, and decided to stop forefoot running to protect it from completely getting cramped. However, my right thigh now had to stand greater burden to compensate for the lack of shock absorption by the calf. This tired the right thigh fairly quickly. The highest point in the race was now visible. This is the moment when most runners experience a tremendous exhilaration with the prospect of going downhill to the finish from that point on. But I was afraid if my right leg could bear the increasing burden till the top. I put up with the misery of being overtaken by faster runners as I crossed the bridge that led to the 15 k mark. Once I reached there, the third aid station would await. The way across the bridge seemed like forever, but I finally reached the other end, and found myself welcomed by aid crew with cheers. I grabbed two paper cups of water quickly, and drank one cup after another. After finishing up the water, I walked over to one side of the road and stretched my right calf several times, and other sore leg muscles just in case. I wasted almost two minutes there. Soon after hydrating myself, I noticed an immediate change in my physical condition. I felt refreshed, and it seemed like all the internal chemical reactions that had been disrupted by dehydration were back to normal. The pain in the right knee was felt mainly when I was going up, so with the uphill phase being over I had little to worry about between the 15 k mark and the finish. By this time I had completely abandoned forefoot running for fear of getting a cramp again. I accelerated as I ran down the winding down slope. I even overtook some runners who became exhausted from pushing too much when going up. I found a female runner going at a pace similar to mine. I followed her for a few miles. Between 18 and 19 k she started slowing down. So I left her behind, and kept on going all by myself. As I approached the finish, the number of cheerers started growing larger. The idyllic landscape in the middle of the race was nowhere to be seen. By now it had been almost completely replaced with modern houses and large corporate buildings and factories. With 1.5 k remaining, runners going around the stadium came in sight. They were soon to cut the finish line. But I still have a mile to go. The large arch that had “START” on it was visible. That’s where I started off less than two hours before. Shortly before going under the arch, the course took a right into a street that led to the entrance to the stadium. The arch of the finish point was in sight, but to reach there I still had to get into the walking path that surrounded the stadium and to make yet another full circle around the stadium to reach the arch from the opposite side. My mentor Mr. Fujimori and my bilingual companion waved at me as they shouted their cheers. From the way he relaxed, I could tell my mentor had finished the race a while before. The walking path was neatly paved and stylishly colored, a great improvement from the previous year. But these visual merits didn’t do any good in terms of making my job easier. The path was not flat, slightly going up, making it enormously difficult to make that last spurt all runners would dream of. Each step felt as heavy as a 10 kg dumbbell. Breathing felt as difficult as untying a tightly fastened knot. Coordination between my upper and lower body was almost non-existent. Twenty more meters to go. And then ten… I rolled down under the finish arch like a dirty, ill-formed snowball. The race was finally over!!
I was so glad that I completed the race without quitting that I completely forgot about checking my time. For the first time I looked at my watch carefully. It said 1:49:19. It’s as bad as the time for my first half marathon more than 5 years before. But that’s OK. I knew I was out of practice. And my main goal was to see how far I could go by forefoot running in a challenging course such as this one. I put myself to a test, and I went as far as 14 k. And I learned a lesson, too. I know I need more distance training to maintain high performance in the latter half of the race. I also know that I need to be more strategic in terms of hydration.
My next race is a half marathon that takes place in the third week of next January. I am going to go back to the kind of training I used to do before my best performance at the Ohme 30 k Road Race this past February. It is a combination of LSD and interval training. Endurance and speed. These are the key elements of running a long distance race comfortably. Neither one can stand alone. Both are necessary. I am going to manage my time well to schedule both types of training for the race.
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