Hotsu River Charity Run 5KM

The northern bank of the Hotsu River in Kameoka town was the scene of some charity fundraising running action this morning. Having only done 2 races in 4 months, I leapt at the chance to test out how my training is going now that I’m on the comeback trail. My plan was to treat this as a ‘run through’: just stick to my regular training for this week, with no race taper, and do this short blast in lieu of a long Sunday run.

 

Looking around at the runners at the front of the field on the start line, I was a bit concerned to see dozens of pre-teen youngsters, until I realised that the 2.5K kids run and 5K were starting together. After a bit of weaving around flailing youngsters who’d started at a sprint, I felt pretty good to be out in the lead after 400M. Being a charity fun run, there was never going to be a strong running field. Most of the first mile was on a tarmac cycleway, before dropping onto a stone-gravel path around several rice paddies.

It was a two lap affair, so I got a good chance to look at some of the other runners on the second lap. I had a healthy lead, but I ran each mile slightly slower than the one previous. It would have been nice to have somebody to chase. Crossing the finishing line in 16:55, my Garmin watch told me that I’d only ran a shade over 3 miles, and not the full 5KM as advertised. Whatever the actual distance was, I felt good, and pleased that I’d ran fairly strongly – an indication that maybe I might be able to run a sub-17 mins 5K again one day.

 

One thing that I noticed during this race is that marshals and spectators shouted, “Fight-o!”, as I ran along. Japanese people often use the word “Ganbarimasu” when offering encouragement, which loosely means “Do your best”, “Struggle to overcome hardship”, or simply “Fight”! I’m used to people in the UK shouting “Go on!” and “Dig deep!”, but this is an interesting variant on the theme.