Running with the Kids

On Friday, I participated in a 4.5 km race against 45 of my school's junior-high-school boys. Yeah, that's right: Old Man Yama running against a bunch of 12- to 15-year-olds. (This isn't the first time. Remember the mini-triathlon?)

I ran in the race last year, too, and ended up with a time of 19:58, which was good enough for a respectable sixth place, even though I crossed the finish line a good 1:33 behind the winner.

This year, I planned to run faster and finish at least one place higher. Well, things worked out just fine.

Just like last year, I got off to a slow start. Going around the first lap, I found myself trailing around 25 runners. Despite the fact that no one had taken a clear lead, I wondered if it maybe wasn't my day, especially since some kids were even passing me. (Last year's start was even worse, as I saw a few runners take off in such a hurry that they easily distanced themselves from the pack and left me with no hope of winning. Furthermore, since so many runners were out of sight that time, I never knew what position I was in until after I finished the race.) But as the race progressed, many of the runners who were ahead of me ran into a wall, whereas I was able to maintain my pace.

Luckily, I was able to keep my eyes on all of the runners in front of me, so I quickly counted bodies and realized that I had managed to move up to 15th place about a third of the way through the race. Then I began to pick off the remaining guys who were in front of me one by one until I was in 8th place. That's when I knew I had a chance to finish better than 6th, so I kept pushing myself to keep the pace going.

With a little more than 1 km to go, I finally made it into 5th place, passing last year's third-place finisher. (I expected him to compete for the title, especially since he told me he that his goal was a top-three finish.) And on the final lap, I even had two more guys in my sights for quite some time. But I just didn't have enough gas left in the tank to pass them.

So how did I do?

Well, I finished in 5th place with an official time of 18:23, which is a big improvement over last year and two seconds faster than last year's winning time! Oh, and believe me, when I see last year's winner later today, I'm going to rub that in! You see, my unofficial time had me finishing with the exact same time as he ran last year. (He ran in a different race this year.) So after the race, he was giving me a hard time about the fact that I was this close to beating him but didn't. So I'll get the last laugh now!

I am a bit bummed that beating last year's winning time only moved me one step up the ladder. But this time I only finished 28 seconds off the lead, even with the school's second-fastest student in the race. (Yes, he won.) So, yeah, overall I'm very pleased with the results!

I must say, however, that last year's race-day temperature was probably about 35, whereas this year's temperature was closer to 50. So obviously that is one explanation for the faster times run this year. But I'm also in better shape now than I was a year ago. And once again I was able to push myself in competition, which is very satisfying.

One crazy thing about the day's events (there was a total of four races) was that there was no food or drinks on hand for the participants until afterward (when a bunch of the parents served some food and a red-bean soup called zenzai). I just don't understand how you can have a bunch of people exercising and not have water and bananas for everyone, for instance. (Actually, there was a water fountain, come to think of it. But if you ask me, that's not good enough.) I remembered that from last year, however, so I had plenty of my own supplies. But the poor kids. None of them seemed particularly thirsty or hungry, but fuel is important. Then again, as I've mentioned plenty of times before, the Japanese seem to like to suffer.

One more crazy thing: After the races, there was very limited support for the kids who were in obvious discomfort (probably because they pushed themselves well beyond their limit or they were severely dehydrated). Although I don't believe any of the kids got hurt, I found the lack of first-aid rather alarming.

Anyway, I'm happy that I was allowed to participate in the race and I'm already looking forward to my next athletic challenge, the road relay race in February. Ganbarimashou!