Race Report - 17th Kitatanzawa 12h Adventure Race

第17回北丹沢12時間山岳耐久レース 

2015 July 5th

http://www.k-y-trail.com/kitatanzawa/index.html#003

Finally a short report two weeks after the race.

The famous trail race turned into ~80% road race because of rain. We skipped the two main peaks.

My only goal was to do better then last year. As it was no more possible to compare, I had no more goal except enjoying as much as possible, what I did, as I was feeling good and could keep a good pace till the end.

I did a mistake at the start. I knew from last year that one should line up at the start line at least half an hour before the starting time if he wants to be close to the front (without cheating). But I lined up at the toilets instead, and arrived only 20min before the start. I was in the middle of the pack. As there is only 2km of road before reaching the trail, I had to run fast from the beginning to pass as many people as possible. Thanks to this, the time loss was not too important in the fist trail section. I was afraid that the energy loss could be more a problem, but eventually I had no slump later.

An interesting thing in the course compare to other years is that the first and last 12.5km were on the same road, so the front of the pack could meet the back of the pack and we could exchange some cheers.

I did another small mistake. In the last trail climbing, I let pass 2 runners who were actually going at the same pace as me. Well, they must have gone a little faster as they caught up with me, but once I let them pass, I could follow them without increasing effort. But they were a little slow in the way down and I could not pass them because it was a narrow, very muddy and slippery trail. I don't blame them because if I had asked them to let me pass they would probably have done it without hesitation. I was thinking that one minute less or more is not a big deal and I decided to relax and enjoy. But eventually, 1min18s less would have enable me to reach my second goal which was to finish 2d in the NES championship in my age group. After 4 races, this is the time between me and my "rival" Yoshiro Abe. I finished ahead of him in 3 races out of 4, but he acquired a large advance at Doshimura. After all it was really my worst course of the season (up to now...).

In the same last muddy downhill, the first woman, Ryoko Eda (2:24:54 hours at 2005 Nagoya Marathon, and 17th at the Helsinki world championship the same year), let us pass. She was really not looking at her ease on this terrain.

It was a good training for the road part of the Fuji mountain race that will come very soon.

Result:

3:37:57

77th among 1595 starter overall 

27th among 617 starter 40yo

GPS data:

2013: 38.77km +2964m (Garmin 310XT)

2014: 36.64km +2747m (Suunto Ambit 2, quite bad with zigzag trails, I suspect the distance is much more, but maybe not as much as the 44km given by the organizers)

2015: 35.28km +1338m (Suunto Ambit 2)

GPS data here.