2015 HM #7
2015 Race #9
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015
Price : 3000 yen
Course : Flat
Course time : 2 hours 30 minutes
Drove up the night before and crashed at the Road Station in Naie. On to Bibai the next morning under clear blue skies. Nice. Legs were feeling a little stiff, but not too bad. Have to be careful on this run. Just gotta finish. I had to wanted to enter the Asahikawa HM on Sunday the 27th, but missed the entry date by one day. (The entry date was two months in advance!) However I really wanted to try and run four half-marathons in one month and, if I took this one slow, I felt I had done enough training this year to handle it.
Signed in, got my race t-shirt (been a while since I got one of them) and started getting ready. Lots of stretching! MHM was doing the 10K as well. Nice little setup here with a big patch of grass, some stalls, beer on tap and yakitori. Fortunately we got a good park for the car too.
Getting near race time and I tried to stand at the back of the HM runners, but in front of the 10K, 5K runners etc. (There was no one holding signs to separate everybody out. Not such a bad idea that…) Of course, when the gun sounds for the HM I started to bump into people who were standing in completely the wrong place. Can handle it if they are kids, but a lot of the time it was the parents standing with their kids, waiting for the last race to start in the middle of the people about to start the first race… Come on!
Anyway, the race was flat, warm, sunny and fairly uneventful. Just cruised it. Really conscious of not running too fast. Got out into the country quick, which didn’t take long, of course. They had a wheelchair race as well. Some were flying, some weren’t. That’s gotta be hard work on your arms.
Hit the 5K water station and it was about this point when I started talking to elementary school teacher guy from Sapporo. One of the good things about running here is the random conversations you have with people. Of course, I’m only really up for two or three minutes…at most. It is a race, after all. For 21K!
I just couldn’t shake this guy though. I would try to speed up (which I really didn’t want to do…) and he would match me. I would ease off the pace and he would do the same. Just hitting me with “by the way…” Over and over again. So many questions. He wasn’t running that fast, but just keeping in time with him was stressing me out. I just wanted to run my own pace. Eventually, I just stopped dead and pretended to stretch. Naturally, he thought I was injured and stopped to see if I was okay. I politely told him I was fine and for him just to continue. This worked…for a while…
Despite trying to run slow, I eventually caught up with him. He noticed me and hit me with “by the way…” for like the 47th time. I told him very politely that I just wanted to run at my own pace and that I couldn’t talk anymore. I probably apologized five times in the process. He apologized six and then we were good.
So the race continued. My old workmate was in this race again. He turns up everywhere. He’s fast though. Like 1:20 fast. Anyway, hit the 10K, the turnaround and the water station just after that. From here on I definitely took more walk breaks. Basically, if I had any kind of weird feeling in my legs, I would stop and walk it out for ten seconds or so. Just gotta finish…
Hit the 15K water station feeling good enough. They actually had another water station at 16K (due to the other races) so I made use of both. Pretty warm out. Kept moving on fairly steadily, walking from time to time if anything felt weird, but with 2K to go I came across my friend from before. I had conserved a lot of energy by this point, but I didn’t want to ease past him as he might start talking to me again! So I blew past him listening to him singing my praises about how tough and powerful etc I was. Kinda funny as we were all running at the wrong end of the race. Just trying to escape too much conversation…
So I picked up the pace for the last 2K. I was sure I could hear him on my heels the whole way – always just my belt bag banging against me… Ha ha. Anyway, ended up finishing strongly…and in one piece. Nice.
Pork soup after the race, but a local yakitori restaurant that MKev mentioned called Tatsumi had a stand as well. There was a big line, but MHM waited in it for me. Sweeeet! Grilled chicken and beer in plastic cups. Always good. Maybe they were just running out of chicken, but we got random pieces of meat. Totally expecting just thigh meat, but there was all sorts. Including the stuff I never order. Wasn’t so pumped on that.
As I was lying on the grass stretching out my back with my eyes closed, someone tapped me on the shoulder. (Pretty much the worst way to approach someone, if you ask me!) I looked up and this guy is right in my face/personal space. Didn’t say a word, just pointed to my name and place of residence in the programme, then flicked through to his name and place of residence…and it turned out we both live in the same town – five hours away. At this point he actually started to talk to me, somewhat bizarrely though. Always nice to talk to people. Just wish they would approach me in a slightly more normal fashion. Or not talk for too long!
Speaking of which, my other buddy came back to talk as well. Fortunately he kept it short!
No free ticket to the hot springs, but you did get a hundred yen discount off it. From 650 to 550 yen. I don’t normally like to pay more than 500 yen, but had to go try it. Along with everyone else in the race and a local soccer school though! Very. Crowded. But…yeah, a nice hot spring! MKev had pumped it up, too…along with the soft cream. MHM ordered an orange soft cream, which turned out to be crazy sour. Like did we get grapefruit by accident?
Ha ha. Too many complaints. Actually quite a good day…and four half-marathons in September. DONE.
Hokkaido Shred 