A Sunday morning run

It was an icy cold morning. As we drove out to the stadium there was a thick layer of frost on the fallow fields, waiting for the soba sowing. It was much too cold to be running. Manabe Sensei picked me up at 8:30 in the morning; we had to register an hour before the race began at 10:30, and the roads were packed.

The occupants of the cars all around us were fitted out in designer running gear. Manabe San was wearing a brand new pair of runners, bought especially for the occasion. They were crisp and white like the harsh light attacking me through the windows. I wanted to drop them in a muddy puddle for him, but remembered we were in Japan and crisp white sneakers were cool here. My own, though in perfectly good repair, looked somewhat shabby. I’d spent a fair bit of money on them a year ago in lieu of paying fees for a gym I didn’t like. Since then they had been running on beaches, roads, next to the lake at Mum’s place and through the dusty Australian bush. They weren’t a fashion statement despite the expensive logo that could get me into trouble with many of my peers. I didn’t even own a pair of trackpants. A decision I was regretting as I looked out at the frosty soil. I’d looked in the sports stores, but reused to outlay upwards of $60 on clothing I would probably only wear around my house.

At the end of last year Manabe Sensei had come into school proudly bearing an English copy of an application form for the Marugame Half Marathon, and invited me to run with him. It would be the 60th Anniversary and therefore somewhat of an event. The organisers were keen for gaigin to participate and had therefore waived the entry fee for anyone not of Japanese decent. Winter hadn’t kicked in yet and I agreed enthusiastically, not realising it was scheduled for the coldest part of the Japanese calendar. There was a 1km race for kids and then the adults were split into 3km, 5km and 20km races. I’d only been running for a year, since Sebast, my housemate, and I, had been dragging each other up and down Merri Creek, in efforts to run off hangovers when we were capable. I would literally die before I could complete the half marathon. However I’d been running out to the mouth of the river pretty regularly, a distance of about 3km, so decided to up the ante and set myself a challenge. With some trepidation I ticked the 5km box.

I began training that day. We had thirty five minutes to complete the course. I asked one of the maths teachers to help me work out the times, my own skills having fallen into disrepair. I had to run at 8.7km/hr to complete the race in the allocated time. This was a matter of some concern. I knew after the first kilometre I would probably fall back to a tortoise pace. I took my sneakers back home for Christmas and ran everyday in the sweltering heat. Just after returning to Japan, I ran 5km for the first time in my life, at the gym. Actually I ran about three, slowed down to a walk for a couple hundred metres, ran some more, walked some, ran some, walked some etc. But I did it just under the thirty five minute limit. I was going to make it.

Then I was knocked flat on my back by the bout of flu currently doing the rounds. For almost a week I did nothing but sleep and sweat, playing with delirium all night after sleeping all day. I lost two kilos in about three days. A week before the race I was still coughing my lungs up after doing anything more strenuous that a casual walk, and even then sometimes! My cough had turned bronchial and seemed quite happy residing in the moist warm depths of my chest. I was scaring the staff at the gym by falling off the treadmill during heavy fits of phlegm exorcism. But I knew the only way to get healthy was to get fit again quickly and chase and sweat the germs out of my body.

We found the registration desk and went in search of coffee, a feat harder than one would expect in Japan. I had to participate in some dumb parade showing off the international community. We descended the steps and I spotted a union jack next to the southern cross. I went over to join my fellow Australasians to discover we were from the same continent but not country. How completely embarrassing. In front of the Vice Principal of the most prestigious elementary school in the prefecture, I had mistaken the Kiwi flag for the Aussie. I waited for the ground to swallow me up but instead found myself at the front of the procession with the two other A for Australians.

The Marugame Half Marathon is an important race. I don’t understand how running competitions work, but it attracts international athletes. I was told many times that day that the Japanese Olympic Gold Medal Winner for marathon running would be attending. Ironically no-one I talked to was really sure whether she had won at Sydney or Athens, or what her name was. So with V.I.P.s watching, we had to walk around the track waving and smiling at the crowd. If I could only find that hole in the ground. Luckily it was over pretty quickly and then we were all kidnapped and taken below the bleachers to receive our race numbers. That however, took an inordinately long time, and I wondered whether this was some fiendish plan to rid Kagawa of gaigin. When I finally escaped and headed back to where Manabe San had said e would meet me, he had long given up and gone off looking for me. Luckily I met Miyazaki Sensei, another teacher from the school, and he did the tricky mobile phone thing and we all met up.

The race itself was horrible. I was under fit and under prepared. Despite the offer to run together, Manabe San and Miyazaki San both shot off at the beginning leaving me to try and find my own steady pace within a surge of bodies. We ran around the track inside the stadium once and out and up the road. However, before completing the first 400 metres, I knew I didn’t have the energy for this today and it was going to be hell. I trundled along watching as legs upon legs ran past me. I tried not to think about competing and only of finishing. Most depressing was the bandy legged old man of at least 70, I kid you not, whom I couldn’t seem to catch up with.

About a third the way through the race I head encouraging screams of “Kirstie! Ganbaru!” do your best, and the beaming faces of my landlords clutching homemade Australian flags. I grinned back, afraid to put my lungs under anymore pressure, and found an extra spurt of energy for my legs. Hirata Naohisa San had to work that day, but his mother, wife and young son were there with bells on. These guys would have to be the nicest people I know in Japan. They’re just super friendly, always helpful, always interested in my life, past and present, always giving me gifts of some sort and seem genuinely concerned for my welfare.

By now there were runners coming back down the road I was battling up. Clearly there was a turning point somewhere in the distance. I started thinking about slowing down to a walk, but no-one around me seemed to be doing likewise. Everyone was persistently keeping their legs bouncing up and down and there crowds of people watching along the sidelines. I seemed to be attracting more cries than most of Gambaru! Perhaps because I was a gaigin, perhaps because I looked closer than most to falling over backwards. However I felt that if I walked I would be letting all these people down too. I’m in Japan, the land of perfection and perseverance. I couldn’t just give up, even for 100 metres. And so I kept up a vague pretence of running.

As we headed back to the stadium, race clocks on the side of the road read over thirty minutes. I knew I was running slowly, but I didn’t think I was doing that badly. As we headed back the clocks were over forty and all I wanted to do was finish in under 50 minutes. I headed back through the entrance and hoped that the finish line would be soon. There were orange cones dividing up the race track, and as I tried to cross over to where everyone seemed to be collapsing, a fellow runner indicated that we had to run around the track one more time. That last 400 metres was pure hell, and if it wasn’t for my new running buddy by my side i don’t think I would have made it. Back inside the stadium, with thousands of people in the stands watching, there was no way I could walk now.

Finally however, I made it, and immediately keeled over and coughed up a couple of litres of crap from my lungs. Manabe San and Miyazaki San found me and ran off to collect some water for me from the free stand. I went off to deposit the nifty technological attachment to my shoelaces that somehow had registered my time for me. There must have been sensors at the beginning end and halfway points. As the clock was now reading 48 minutes I was severely disappointed in myself and just wanted to get home to a hot bath. As the sweat cooled on my body and the reality of a cold winter’s day seeped into my bones I once again regretted not having bought those expensive trackpants to run in.

When Manabe Sensei had picked me up he had invited me out to lunch with him and his family after the race. I wondered what we were standing around waiting for when the first of the half marathon runners came zooming into the stadium. They were amazing. They had just run twenty kilometres but were still running faster than I could probably sprint in a fifty metre dash, if I really had to catch a bus, say. Their muscles gleamed under shiny sweaty skin and the first runner crossed line in a time of one hour. Wow! That means they ran at 20km/hr for an hour straight. It was then the two teachers at my side told me that the clock hadn’t been showing my time at all, but that of the real race contestants. I felt somewhat better.

We headed off past the results computers and had a card printed out showing our stats. I had run a time of 32 minutes 21 seconds, my best time ever despite being sick. Unfortunately I came 130th/180 female competitors. Already thinking about next year I decided I wanted to get below thirty minutes. Cold and weary, but content, Manabe Sensei and I bade farewell to Miyazaki Sensei and went off to meet his wife and daughter for beer and pizza. In the car we looked forward to respectively well deserved lazy afternoons of warm couches and videos.