I have just had a fantastic weekend participating in the Minano 50K Trail Race (a 52km race in the mountains near Chichibu, Japan).
I travelled down to Chichibu on Saturday on the amazing Laview train with my friend Tomoko. (I wonder why most trains do not have these big windows). Next, I took a local train to the race registration and collected my race number and bag. After that, we returned to Chichibu to meet another friend, Noriko. In Chichibu, we visited the shrine, bought some breakfast, checked into the hotel and went for dinner. I set my alarm for 4:30 am and went to bed early.
Sunday morning, I left the hotel at about 5 am and caught the local train back to the start of the race. We started running at 7 am under bright but cloudy skies. Saturday’s temperature had been 28C and very sunny, so I was a but worried about the race. Sunday was cooler (with a high of 24C), cloudy, but a bit humid.
In total, the race was 52 km, and the total amount of climb was 2,600 metres. I was a little bit worried about the time cut-offs, before the race but I finished 2 hours inside them. The first 30km were not too difficult. Some of the trail ascents and descents were a bit technical but nothing too demanding. The course was a double loop course, first 30km, then a separate 22km loop. The first loop had two mountains, and the second loop had one mountain that we went up twice.
The aid stations were amazing, with lots of choices of drinks (including barley tea), bananas, grapefruit, and quite often Japanese food, too. A lot of the running was through forests, so the views were all the more spectacular when they came.
The second loop was much harder than the first. To give a sense of what some of the ascents were like, kilometre 42 was 202 metres of climb, which means it average 20% (and some of it was much steeper). In quite a few sections, we had to use ropes or chains to haul ourselves up the rocks or to control our descents. This is both slow and tiring. On the 3rd climb of the day, the ascents tended to be a few hundred metres of steep uphill, followed by 100 to 200 metres of very steep downhill, which meant that the amount of climbing we did was quite a bit more than just the height of the mountain.
I was happy with how I tackled the race. I ran inside my comfort zone and enjoyed the whole experience. I would have like to have been a bit faster over the last 7km (they were relatively flat), but my legs had decided we were going to move steadily.
After the race, I met my friends (they had been hiking in the mountains and visiting shrines), and we took the train back to Tokyo and had a nice meal in Ikebukuro.
The race took me just under 9 hours 54 minutes, and I finished 318 out of 452 male runners (and 20th out of the 36 male runners over 60 years old. When they publish the full results I will see where I came in total (men and women).
From a training point of view, I need to get stronger at these long, steep uphills, and I probably need to do a few more 10+ hour runs. But, overall, I am happy with the progress I am making.
Here are some photos and two videos from the Race
2 replies on “The Minano 50K Trail Race”
Oh the long uphill climbs. They are my weakness too, Ray.
I guess we have to pay our cards accordingly on the day. It is hard to get chance to train for them, even in the Peaks.
It sounds like an amazing race. I look forward to hearing more about it on your return.
Oh the long uphill climbs. They are my weakness too, Ray.
I guess we have to play our cards accordingly on the day. It is hard to get chance to train for them, even in the Peaks.
It sounds like an amazing race. I look forward to hearing more about it on your return.