I’ve just got back from my 5km race.
I woke a little later than planned, so I set of by bike to the event. It was better than going by bus, it got my juices flowing. I opted for an audiobook (Dune – Frank Herbert read by Scott Brick , it’s excellent) instead of music for the journey so that I could keep it nice and relaxed. On arrival at the gym I swapped the postcard I had received for a goody bag containing a race T-shirt, race program, my number with an RF chip stapled to it, a bottle of water, a face towel and, naturally, some soy sauce.
(the ‘17th’ here is because this is the 17th time the race has been held, it isn’t a misprint)
I was pleasantly surprised to meet up with some kids and a teacher from Nishi Elementary School and I had a nice chat with them. At 9am it was time for the opening ceremony.It wouldn’t be Japan without one.
First off was the 2 & 3 km race, the parent-and-child race. It was nice to see some of my elementary-school kids there and to cheer them on. The winners finished incredibly quickly. While I was waiting a volunteer medic decided to practice his English on me, and asked me if I’d like a quick blood test. I declined.
Then I was up on the starting line, after a good warm-up stretch. I had been called “broad-minded” because I had heaphones on. It wasn’t a compliment. I hadn’t done any training runs without music so I didn’t fancy starting now. I also liked to make sure runkeeper was running and to get the audio updates from it. I love runkeeper . Both runkeeper and the couch-to-5km running plan were, combined, the reason I was here.
A few months ago when I started the training for this I was useless. I could barely run for a minute. I was running 1 minute, walking 90 seconds. And I was knackered. Today it was 5km, roughly 30 mins, no breaks (read on, dear reader, there was a short break).
Back to the starting line. I waves a “Hello and gambatte” to the pupils and ex-pupils who were there. Ready to run. 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, 10 seconds. Go! I set off, and mucked up the controls to runkeeper and set it to a 2.75km training run. No great disaster, it would just tell me to stop a little early, it would keep monitoring my run. Heart-rate monitor read a respectable 140-something bpm after the first minute and everything was good. There was a minor hiccup when I realised that one of my shoes were untied but it was easily fixed (the short break). I avoided the water pedlars, I’ve found that drinking en route is counter-productive. Maybe if it had been a longer distance. Not much else happened really. I was very pleased when my final song was playing (Bruce Springsteen – Born to run, couldn’t have asked for a better finale from shuffle), I legged it to the end, overtaking two chaps between 7-11 and the end of the run. Seeing the finish line was incredible, and everyone was giving it beans in a very Japanese way cheering us on. It was magical. My RF-ID chip was unceremoniously ripped from my chest by an elementary-school student, I was handed a bottle of water and I went for a ‘little sit down’ before picking up my certificate. Turns out I did it in 29 minutes and 25 seconds, which isn’t bad as a starting point from which to improve. The certificate also informed me that it was 29 degrees Centigrade with a humidity of 78%. Knowledge is power.
So, what next? I’m going to keep training at about 5km for a few weeks to build up some speed then start aiming for a 10km in a few months. Time will tell. I definitely enjoy this a lot more than I thought I would.
I’ll leave you with a map of the route.

