PRexemplar.com - Road to 234

When we got the train station at 5:30AM, all of the seats were already taken.  I had to stand in the middle of the car, unable even to grab onto the hanging supports, for the 40 minute ride from Nagano to Obuse.  Once we got to Obuse, we checked in our bags and then stood in line some more to use the restroom.  I finally started warming up about thirty minutes before the race, but my knee was a little sore.  After a few minutes, I stopped and stretched, and I felt much better on the jog back to the start.

Once I stopped my warmup, the sweat welled up.  The temperature was probably still only in the mid 80s, and it would warm up more later, but the humidity was like the inside of a steam bath.  Though I got back with at least ten minutes to spare, the starting line was packed full of runners.  How pleasant.  We had the privilege of listening to boring speeches from the Mayor, the Honorary Guest, and the Race Director.  I really, really didn’t want to stand for ten more minutes, so I sat in the corner of the crowd, but when I heard a high pitched woman’s voice speaking heavily accented Japanese mixed with perfect English, I stood up.  The Race Director was a foreigner indeed.  She had platinum blond bleached hair and terrible clownish makeup.  She had to be at least fifty, but she wore a bright pink jacket that had to words “Obuse Mini Marathon” written on the back.

Someone from our group came up next to me, covered in sweat, and said he didn’t catch my name last night at the restaurant.  We exchanged introductions for the second time, and I asked Jared what kind of time he was aiming for.  “One EIGH-ty,” he said.  I scrunched my face, and repeated his response.  “No,” he said, “One EIGH-tEEN.”

Oh.  Jared is from Australia.

He asked me what I was aiming for and I told him that I was just there to get a fun long run in before Mt. Fuji in just a few more days.  So, I said, I think I’d be happy with about 1:25.

Jared said that the first 5K was the toughest part of the course, so I shouldn’t be surprised if I only hit twenty minutes.  I said that sounded fine, but in my mind I was thinking about how slow that is.  He said we should run together and I agreed.

An old man was talking to the young man next to me and kept saying, “You’re going to be the champion again, right?  I’ll see you at the finish.  Do your best.”  This annoyed me and I wished I had brought my Gu and wore my lightweight shoes rather than the bricks laced to my feet.

The race finally started and I felt good.  I thought I was going fairly slowly, but I was in about 5^th place, so I decided to back off a bit and just run with Jared.  After one kilometer, we were at 3:30, but I didn’t know what that meant in minutes per mile.  Then I realized it was about 5:30 pace, much faster than planned, and I backed off some more.

The course was lined with people, and it seemed the whole town was either volunteering or cheering.  They had various musical and dancing performances all along the way with varying degrees of talent.  People offered free samples of their products: apples, juices, cucumbers, peaches, wine, and brown sugar candies.

Before long my right knee started to bother me.  Actually, the pain really wasn’t much, but it was affected my form, and the thoughts that I was running asymmetrically and could get injured during this “race” if I wasn’t careful bothered me much more.  Had it been just a regular training run, I would’ve stopped, gone home and iced, taken some Advil, and reassessed my training, but here I was in Japan running a race I put a lot of time and money to get to, and the only way to get home was to make it to the finish line somehow.

I felt fat.  Not only because my legs were less bouncy than overcooked udon noodles, but also because I found myself surrounded by people who were thinner and looked fitter than myself.  I realized that I eat far too much.  Even among the Nanban Rengo group, comprised of people from around the world, I clearly was the biggest eater.  Everyone else would leave food on their plates and I would be the one to eat it.

I kept slowing down, and then a little girl passed me.  She really was a “little girl,” short in stature and probably a freshman in high school.  I was impressed.  She was going very fast for her age and sex, though I was going very slowly for mine.  I concluded that the girl must be a local because she was waving and saying “hi” to people while handing me my ass.  I wasn’t breathing hard and my muscles felt fine, but I think that on any other day I could've run faster in a Tincan Man suit.  I decided to stay with the girl, at least.  We could not have been going much faster than seven minutes per mile pace.

I drank fluids at every aid station, taking in the highly promoted new Amino Value drink when I could.  I found it very hard to drink and run at the same time, even when slowing down to a crawl, and more than once I ended up with water in my nose.

I decided to stop and stretch in the hopes that it would help my knee feel better and that I could at least run normally the rest of the way.  The chubby balding Irish guy in the Nanban group passed me, but I told myself I’d pass him back (I never saw him again, though).

Eventually I took to walking at all the aid stations because I knew I needed to replace my fluids.  However, the water just sloshed around in my stomach because I didn't have enough sodium in my system.  Once, a little boy pointed at me and said, “Look, he’s walking!”  His mother was about to scold him but I just laughed it off and waved before grabbing a cup of water.

Since I didn’t go number two before the race, my digestive system was getting upset with me.  Every time I sped up to a decent pace, I had to clench my sphincter…

Around the 18km mark, I completely lost it.  My left hamstring cramped and locked in the exact place were I tore my muscle last year.  I stretched it out for a few minutes, then consoled myself that I only had to walk about two miles to the finish.  It almost cramped again even while I walked.  A lady who saw me grimace and stop offered her help, but I didn’t see what she could do, so I smiled, waved, pretended everything was fine, and thanked her.

At the next aid station, all of the volunteers were little kids and they all screamed, “Ganbare! Ganbare!”  I didn’t know if they were talking to me or to the other competitors, many of whom expressed their irritation with my blocking of the way, but I felt humiliated to not even be able to run a whole half marathon.  Clearly, there was something very wrong with me, but at that point I felt I’d rather break my leg or die than walk the rest of the way.

I downed my drink, threw the cup into the trash bin, and took off.  Though the pace was probably only my full marathon pace, it felt like 5K pace, and I passed a handful of people almost immediately.  After a few minutes, the sky got darker, and I couldn’t tell if it was me or the sky.  A few drops of rain fell, and then it stopped.  I looked up and saw little lightning bolts but I knew they were coming from within my eyeballs, not the sky.

The last kilometer or so was a counter-clockwise spiral, and suddenly I felt very good.  The pain in my knee was gone and I just rolled along at the pace I wanted to be running all along.

At the finish line expo, they had more performances, including Hawaiian and Hip-hop dancing.  I ate free carrots, peaches, watermelon, jicama, cucumber with miso, and bananas.  They had some black juice cartons in a chilled kiddie pool where a toddler was playing with the water, and I grabbed a drink.  I took a big gulp because I needed something, anything, to rehydrate and replace my energy stores quickly, and I almost gagged.  It was “black vinegar and apple” juice.

I searched out the portapotties so I could finally relieve the pressure, but when I found them, they were all Japanese style, and the last thing I wanted to do after a painful run like the one I’d just had was squat over some hole; but I had no choice.  I used the walls to hold myself up, since my legs were no longer capable of doing that job, and let go of a steady stream of chocolate gelato, complete with undigested bits of the previous night’s Italian dinner.

I spent the rest of the next hour revisting the portapotties and trying to replace the water coming out of my butt.  I was dizzy, so I lied down, but ants and other insects crawled all over me.  Then I made the mistake of moving a toe, which resulted in my ankle locking in a fully upright position, preventing me from standing.  As I lay there, the right side of my upper back started cramping as well.  I desperately wanted “real” food, something with substantial carbohydrates and protein and substance, but nothing but fruits and vegetables were to be found.  There was actually a line of people at the booth selling Asahi beer, and I wondered how anybody could drink beer after going through that race.

Eventually, we grouped together and prepared to leave the expo.  The club was divided between people who wnated to go to an onsen and people who wanted to go drinking.  At that point, losing more water via sweating at a hot spring bath was out of the question, but then again so was losing more water by drinking alcohol.  I went with the drinking group anyway, since I figured I could find some food that way.  I had a fairly strong craving for Unagi over rice that went unfulfilled.

The drinking group went to Obuse’s tourist district, a block of shops and restaurants centered around the Hokusai Museum.  The only sustenance I had for the next four hours were two servings of chestnut ice cream and some senbei crackers, though I don’t care for chestnuts at all.  The symbol of the town of Obuse is a chestnut, but I didn’t see a single nut on any tree, and essentially the only flavor of ice cream available is chestnut.  I saw a place with wasabi flavor, but the idea of that is horrid.

I ingratiated myself with the senbei store lady, and she was kind enough to let me buy 100 yen worth of senbei with a 10,000 yen bill.  Hurray for 9,900 yen of change.  Thereafter, every time I walked by, which was quite often, she smiled and said “Arigatougozaimasu.”  Maybe my tastebuds were also blasted from the race, but those senbeis really weren’t very tasty.

After a while of socializing with some Nanban runners over our chestnut ice creams, I felt well enough to join two other Nanban runners, an Australian and an Englishman, at the bar of the local sake brewery.  Unfortunately the brewery did not offer tours, but the bar was amazing.  I was not sure what would happen to me if I drank, but I figured I’d give one cup a try, and at least I could relax in an air conditioned building until our lunch appointment.

The bar was fantastic.  They offered complimentary salt from around the world—Tibet, Okinawa, Mongolia, and the Andes—which came in different colors, sizes, and flavors, and I took advantage of the opportunity to replace some much needed sodium.  The sake was even better, particularly their “Hekiiken” brand, which was magically both sweet and dry at the same time, and had a pleasant aftertaste that stayed in my mouth much longer than I’ve ever experienced.  The time eventually came for us to go to lunch at the restaurant connected to the sake brewery, and I ordered another Hekkiken. I got fairly drunk and told the women at my table stories about how it’s been scientifically proven that eating Myoga vegetables or fried shrimp makes you stupid and how I am both a hot dog eating and run-eat-run champion.  I don’t really remember the food other than that they served us Myoga vegetables and there were no fried shrimps.

After lunch we headed to a ryokan, a Japanese style Inn, nestled in the corner of one of the regional mountains.  I have no idea how the ryokan employees get to work everyday.  I hope for their sake that they don’t have to live there for their jobs.  I finally got to wash off my sweat and grime at the large onsen bath, where I was joined by several old naked men, and it felt nice except for the mold on the tub floor and the bits of junk floating in the water.

We were served a gourmet Japanese fifty piece dinner in the “grand banquet hall.”  The room was equipped with a karaoke machine, but nobody suggested using it, and I was a touch disappointed since rightly or wrongly I saw it as an opportunity to redeem myself a bit.  The food was very good, and although the individual dishes were exceedingly small, I filled my stomach by eating all of my own food and then some.  I flirted with the older woman next to me, retelling the run-eat-run and hog dog contest stories, and she in turn kept refilling my beer glass and told me stories of her business trips to Europe.

This morning I woke up with no idea where I would go and what I would do once we got back to Nagano, let alone where I would spend the night.  A few members of the Nanban group asked me that question, and I told them all the same answer, “I don’t really know.”  We ate breakfast in a building belonging to the ryokan, but located across the street.  They had wild blueberries, fresh plums, cucumbers with miso, soup, fish, various condiments, a half-boiled egg, of course rice, and the best apple juice and coffee I’ve ever had in my entire life.  Some people went running afterward, but I couldn’t join them because my knee hurt and I could barely get up and down the stairs even while using the handrail to support most of my weight.

When they came back, they wanted to jump into the creek, and I joined them there.  It felt nice because I needed to ice my knee and the creek was the closest thing to an ice bath I’ve had in quite a while.  People were swimming around and trying to see who could get furthest upstream.  Then the Irish guy who crushed me in the race lost his wedding ring and the fun was over.  I stood there awkwardly, unable to be of any use, and then I realized that I needed to check out and hop on the shuttle bus back to civilization or else I was going to be sort of screwed.