SAKURA-MICHI INTERNATIONAL NATURE RUN 2007
Sakura Michi International Nature Run is held every year in the end of April. The race is organized as to honor the japanese bus driver mr. Ryoiji Sato, who's dream was to plant cherry blossom trees (japanese translation "Sakura") along the 266km road from Pacific Ocean to the sea of Japan). The race route from Nagoya to Kanazawa (250km) follows this traditional road (Sakura road) across the main island of Japan, called Honshu. The story tells that mr. Sato planted approximately 2000 trees along this road all by himself in his spare time (and with his mediocre salary).
Bilde: Fellesmiddag for internasjonale løpere
The organization has a limit of 20 foreign and 80 japanese runners. All the foreign runners have a possibility to spend four days befor the race in a place called "Abram Institute" which is located a couple of hours from Nagoya train station. The contact person for foreign runners, mr. Hiroshi Ogo, will accommodate and feed the hungry runners during these days and also give a race briefing in english beforehand. All foreing runners are welcomed to stay the last night before the race in a hotel nearby staring point, the Nagoya Castle. The race starts at Friday 6am and after the race all runners are accommodated in a hotel in Kanazawa with a relaxing recovery in nice hot/cold baths.
Bilde: Nagoy Castle
As the race starts, Im very confident about my condition since Ive had the opportunity to run through the whole winter without any injuries or sicknesses or anything like that. I increased my weekly training hours to 20 hours (plus a litte bit of extra) which I followed two weeks and the third week was a rest week with about only five hours of easy running. I repeated this four times so I collected ten 20h+ weeks before the race and that seemed to work just fine because the race went great. In the beginning of the race, the runners will spend their first five hours (approximately) in just getting of the big city of Nagoya with some mild traffic and lots of (close to a hundred!) traffic lights where stopping is more or less mandatory. At times it's even possible to watch a traing going by and there's no other option than wait a couple of minutes every now and then. The beginning of the race is very runnable and after the Shirotori checkpoint at 106,5km (first out of four elimination points) I hear from the race officials that my starting pace was quite good. I remember replying back something about a nice, great feeling that I had and didn't want to bother myself with some information about time/distance predictions. After all, I didn't travel here to race against the others but instead to experience something extraordinary and to have fun along the course. But I'll admit that I started out pretty fast and didn'n want to take it too easy because the running just felt so good that I wanted to enjoy ever single moment of the "easy-fast-running" -feeling that I had.
Bilde: Også ultraløpere må vike for toget
Even though the surface of the route is all asphalt, the course profile is anything else than just easy and flat terrain. Some of the tunnels were bigger and had more space to run safely. At some points the uphills were amazingly though and long, but with a hard effort I managed to run up every single one of them. I remember walking 500m during the entire course and that was somewhere near 170km when the terrain was flat and there was actually no reason at all for doing that. Later on I remember wondering many times that why on earth I started walking at that point? I guess I was just talking to myself again (I did that a lot at night time) and forgot to continue the "running movement" during my conversation with myself.
There were also tens of tunnels of which the smaller ones were quite narrow and as two cars came across I had to lean towards the wall just to "stay alive". The bigger ones had more room to run and they were actually very exciting places to travel through even though the surface on the sides was hard concrete.
Bilde: En lengere tradisjon og et lengere løp
I had such a great time all along the race that I couldn't even believe it myself. I chatted with checkpoint personnel, sang some Finnish songs, took lots of pictures and wondered where are all the fast runners that were supposed to catch me well before dark since they started 12 minutes after me? We started out in six smaller groups with 3min intervals - 6:00, 6:03, 6:06, 6:09, 6:12 and 6:15 - the fastest runners in the last group. I started in the second group and when the sun set I still didn't see anyone coming behind me. Wondering that along a top of a steep and long hill, I arrived at CP 25 (128,4km) and noticed it was only 6:07pm (12h 7min) so I was amazed about the pace I had kept up since I didn't feel exhausted at all but instead full of life, energy and joy! At that time I started to wonder what's going on and heard that I'm on 2nd place. I continued on and jogged at relaxed pace with nothing particular on my mind.
Arriving at CP 32 (163,1km) I caught the leading runner, mr. Takehiro Matsushita with whom I had funny conversations before the race. So we're happy to see again here in the dark. He's also 28 years old and was the winner of the last year's race. He had the same kind of attitude towards the race as I since he was just laughing, taking pictures and telling jokes even though he's legs were all tired and he decided to slow down a little bit. I showed him some skills I had learned from mr. Ogo and ate the rice and vedgetables with chop sticks and we had such a great time that the officials reminded us that there's a race going on but no hurry! This was definitely the best moment of the whole race because it somehow describes the whole idea what this kind of a race for me is all about. It's not a race against other runners, not a race with sad faces, not a race in which the main point is to focus how fast someone can run the given distance. Actually, I don't think it is a race at all. It's more like a holiday, an adventure, a chance to see what all is out there in the world for us to see and discover if we just give ourselves a chance to experience all that. And it's also an exciting way to have a great time.
When I arrived in Kanazawa I was happy, of course and it was fun as usual. But finishing the race didn't bring me anywhere near as memorable thoughts or emotions that I experienced in the darkness at that checkpoint 32 with "Take", as he calls himself. We promised to meet again in Spartathlon so I'm eagerly waiting for us to see again. I strongly recommend anyone who loves Spartathlon to also experience this great race in Japan. It's more or less similar with Spartathlon without the one exception that there is not a rocky mountain like in Greece near the village of Sangas. For anyone willing to hear a comparison between these two races I mention that I feel it's impossible to compare these two races and actually I don't see any point in that at all. But in order to say something, I don't believe there is much differences in the toughness and believe me when I say that this Sakura-Michi is not an easy one to just jog through... Those uphills can really wear you down if the legs start feeling heavy before the dawn so the profile is anything else than easy. But when I think about it, those hills were by far the best section of running the course.
Pasi Kurkilahti
