In my last post, I alluded to a period of
blog-silence. One thing that happened during that silent period is that I ran
the Fukuchiyama Marathon again, in late November of 2012. The reason I didn’t
blog about it at the time (other than me being lazy) is that I was a little embarrassed.
I got a decent time (about 3:11, I think), but the race was a disaster. Quinn
didn’t really get the distinction; her logic was that if my time is an
improvement over the previous one, then the race was a success. The problem is
that it didn’t feel like a success –
I’d been hoping to break 3 hours and was on track to do so (by a pretty wide
margin) until about 32 kilometers (20 miles) in; at which point things fell
apart. In distance-running lingo, I bonked. I had no energy left and the
thought of running another step was unbearable; I stopped and walked for a
while, then sort of alternated walking and running for the last few miles. My
legs didn’t even really hurt all that much; the entire problem was that I just
ran out of energy.
There are a few possible reasons for this;
Gus was about 3 1/2 months old at the time, and none of us were sleeping much
or able to focus on much of anything. That’s a lame excuse, though. The real
reason is that I did the whole thing without much of a plan. My training plan
basically consisted of running a whole lot of miles at whatever pace felt good,
my race plan consisted of starting with my 3:00:00 goal time, dividing by
42.195 km to get 4:16 per km, and figuring that if I tried to run every km
under that time then I’d be fine. Not so much. I was frustrated with myself,
and by the next morning I was itching for a do-over.
So I signed up for the next race I could
feasibly train for, the Kakegawa Shincha Marathon (掛川新茶マラソン) in Kakegawa, Shizuoka prefecture. The name means “Kakegawa new tea
marathon” – they grow a lot of tea in the area, and at this time of year the
new leaves are just coming out. I was determined to do everything differently
this time; I got myself a very focused training plan from Marathon Nation that
had me running harder and faster than ever before, I wrote out
obsessively-detailed pre- and post-race plans, and I was determined that this
time I would hit my goal of a sub-3:00 marathon.
Here’s the timeline, in pictures:
The evening before the race, I caught the Shinkansen to Kakegawa, checked into my
hotel and headed out for dinner. I was looking for something carbohydrate-rich,
predictable, and familiar, and I wound up at Coco Ichibanya. For those who aren’t familiar with it ここいち (as it’s affectionately called) is a chain restaurant that serves
Japanese brown curry. It’s decent, and I eat there often enough to make it
predictable and familiar. I asked for extra rice (400g total) and made a point
of not asking for extra-spicy (which I usually do).
Then I went back to the hotel, pored over
the race map and elevation chart some more and was in bed by 9:30pm.
At 5:30am (4h before race start), I woke up
and went for my pre-race breakfast. The advice I found on this
recommended a carbohydrate-heavy meal (about 1.2-1.5 g per pound of body
weight); I was looking at English-language sites so they were very enamored
with bagels and oatmeal. Those are sort of exotic here so I went
Japanese-style, with daigakuimo
(honey-glazed sweet potato) and onigiri
(seaweed-wrapped rice balls). I’d done this exact breakfast 4 hours before one
of my training runs, but I had a lot more butterflies in my stomach this time.
At 7:30am (2h before race start), I went
down to the hotel breakfast area for the second carbohydrate-rich breakfast
installment: bread and orange juice. To the left is the race course map, which
I’d pretty much memorized by this point.
By 8:30am (1h before race start), I was at
the train station waiting in line for the shuttle bus to the race start.
Waiting in lines is a time-honored Japanese distance running tradition. If I
had to do it all over again, I would have gotten on the bus a little earlier; I
was a little bit rushed trying to figure out where the starting line was, stash
my backpack, etc.
This is a view out the bus window at some
of those famous tea fields. I really had no idea that this is what tea plants
look like.
This is my pace plan, copied to the back of
my left hand. The ink held up fairly well while I was running, but my reading
skills didn’t – next time I’ll write the last few bigger than the rest.
At 9:00am (30 minutes before start), I had
the last installment of pre-race breakfast, a “One Second” energy gel. These
things are proof that they don’t actually make everything smaller in Japan –
41.4g of carbohydrates in one squeeze. It usually takes me longer than one
second to get the screw-top open, but from there the delivery is as quick as
advertised. They’re a little too big to fit comfortably in the pockets of my running
shorts, but I’d brought four of them to stick in my pockets, planning to put
one down every 40 minutes or so.
The race staging area was in a big field in
Tsumagoi (つま恋, literally “wife love”) park. The weather was nice (warmish but
mostly cloudy), and people had tents and tarps set up. There were booths with
food, souvenirs, etc. around the perimeter and a stage set up with live music.
I left my stuff in an easy-to-find spot and headed for the starting area.
Once I got into the starting corral (packed
in like sushi, as they say), I suddenly realized (to my horror) that I’d
forgotten the gels that I’d planned on putting in my pockets. They were still
sitting in my backpack, and there was no way that I’d have time to run over,
grab them, and make it back before the start. I just reminded myself that part
of the plan was to stick with the plan even if some pieces of it don’t work
out, and promised myself not to pass up on any drink stations.
My goal was to finish in 2:59:55, leaving
myself a small margin of error. That translates to a 6:52/mile pace; my plan
was to run 7:07 miles for the first five miles, and speed up to 6:47 for the
next 15, then have the option of slowing down to 6:52 for the final 6.2. I
usually spend the first few miles of a race weaving through the crowd, jumping
up on sidewalks to pass people and generally getting the adrenaline pumping.
This time, I made an effort to keep it slow and conservative and let lots of
people pass me.
I stayed on my pace (actually a tiny bit
ahead of it) until the 5 mile mark, and then started to speed up as the initial
hills ended and the race flattened out. I actually had a little bit of trouble
setting my “cruise control” to 6:47 after running a few miles at 7:07 – I can
run fast and I can run slowly, but staying at an in-between pace like that is
challenging sometimes. After about two miles I’d gotten into the rhythm of a
6:47 pace and managed to stay there from then on. I lost a little bit of time during
those first couple of miles, though – it didn’t help much that I had a headwind
for most of the first half of the race. In keeping with my plan, though, I
forbade myself any thinking (in particular re-adjusting the plan) until I got
to the 20-mile mark and had some sense of what I had left.
After 20 miles, I was about 30 seconds
behind my planned-out split time, but still felt really good. I decided that
instead of slowing down, I would run the last 6 miles at about a 6:47 pace, so
that I could make up those 30 seconds. The last 6 miles were fairly hilly, so
what I really ended up doing was running about 6:30 on the downhill parts and
then just trying to keep moving on the uphill parts. The last mile was all
uphill, and I took it as fast as I could. That last mile was without a doubt
the most difficult thing I’ve ever done while running; I just kept repeating to
myself “I’m going to make it, I’m going to make it.”
And make it I did – 2:58:41, more than a
minute faster than my original goal. I was a little worried that I might faint
(the people running the finish area were probably even more worried), but I
managed to hold it together.
When I got back to where I’d left my
backpack (and those four energy gels), I got my camera out and asked someone to
take my picture. It’s not a great picture of me, but it captures the moment
perfectly. My eyes are closed, but not because I blinked. As soon as I handed
off the camera, my right calf seized up and I’d closed my eyes because it hurt
so much. But I’m still smiling.
I left Quinn a voice mail to let her know I’d
survived, and drank a whey protein shake thing that I’d packed as a post-race
toast. The next item on my post-race plan was to head to Shinrin no yu (森林乃湯, literally “hot
water in the forest”), a hot spring bath located at the north end of the Tsumagoi. There was supposed to be
a shuttle bus, but when I got to the area where it was supposed to pick people
up there was no bus and no one waiting for the bus, so I walked, eating most of
a loaf of raisin-walnut bread while walking (also part of the plan).
I don’t have any pictures from Shinrin no yu because, well, it involved
a bunch of naked dudes and they frown on picture-taking. (I didn’t actually
ask; I’m just assuming.) Totally the best post-race activity ever. In addition
to the usual hot-water baths, they also had a few cold-water baths that were
probably getting a lot more traffic than usual, as people were using them to
ice their battered muscles in between (longer) stays in the hot baths. My legs
felt much better after several rounds of the hot-and-cold treatment.
Then it was a shuttle bus, another shuttle
bus, a panicked search for an ATM, and a Shinkansen
ride home. I'm definitely not in the mood for a do-over this time. In fact, after I finished I saw some kids (presumably waiting for a parent to finish the race) doing something that might become my new preferred form of exercise for the near future.
Bungee-assisted trampoline! How cool is that?
