Shioya Marathon

Japan has borrowed lots of English words, some (most?) of which are given a slight change of meaning. One of these words is 'marathon', which just means race. So when I say I ran the Shioya marathon to someone here in Japan, they might say, "Which one? The 5k?".

I was signed up for the 9.5k. The race use to be a full 10k, but due to some road construction a long time ago, the roads were changed and thus the course shortened to 9.5k. The point isn't so much running 10k, but more that the course circles Shioya Bay. I woke up early, ate some fruit and was very pumped. I started running as a kind of mental therapy, but now I run because it just makes me feel awesome. Shioya is just up the road from me, so most of my students would be there and I was really looking forward to them cheering me one while feeling awesome. That's a double dose of awesomeness.

At the Nago Marathon, I started off strong, but had a horrible finish. I'm still a beginner, and my weak point right now is I cramp up. My mind and muscles keep pushing me, but I end up having to walk due to side cramps. My goal for Shioya was to take the first half easy and end strong. However, I had one thing working against me: the previous night's drinking.

I was convinced to have a beer (a tall one) after my English class the night before, and one led to three (three tall ones). The next morning, I felt fine. But once the race started, I probably ran not 5 minutes before I got a side cramp. This was bad because it doesn't hit me for at least 40 minutes usually and once it hits, it doesn't seem to go away. So I started to face a possibility that I would walk 10k. What also sucked was that I was still in the middle of town and a lot of people I knew were watching me. So I got to enjoy the feeling of walking past my students not even 5 minutes into the race.

I walked the first 4k of the race, trying to run a bit here and there, but getting stopped by my cramp. Then when I reached the '6k to go' sign, I stopped at the break table, drank some water, and tried running again. I felt the cramp disappear and remember thinking I had less than 30 minutes if I wanted to finish the race under an hour. I took off and started passing all the old people who had passed me in the beginning. By the '2k to go' sign, I was in a full run, and the last kilometer I practically sprinted.

My time: 1 hr 4 min.

This was a 9.5k race, though. I ran the Nago 10k in 1 hr 2 min, so I did not improve, but I was really proud of my finish. Especially when I was going at a full run and all my kids were like "Yeaa!!! Cliff-sensei!!!!" (Later, when I told them my time, they changed their attitude to "Pfft. Slow.")

Again, I was left with the feeling of, 'how fast can I actually run 10k if I don't cramp?' I will have to wait for the fall when racing season starts up again to find out.