Hasetsune Cup Finished! Started the 71.5km race on Sunday 1pm and finished just before 6am on Monday with a total time of 16:54 (665 place/~2200 people).

The winner of this year’s cup (first time a non-Japanese won the event) managed a time of 8:03! Here is a good interview of the winner who gave his thoughts on the race.

Pre-race
I had only had time for two trail running sessions and one trail running event over the last 2-3 months. In the two practice session, I managed to recon the first 57km of the trails but both sessions were done during the day. It was informative but not training in night would come back to haunt me..

Anyways, the emphasis of this race is self-sufficiency and with only one aid station at the 45km mark where you are entitled to 1.5 liters of water or sports drink, you had to carry everything else with you. I carried:

• 3 VAAM gel packs
• 3 onigiri (konbu)
• 3 Soyjoy nutrition bars (blueberry)
• 3 BCAA packets (4950mg)
• 2 liters of water + 1 liter of Pocari Sweat
• light fleece jacket

CP1
It was mostly raining the day before the race and it only stopped raining 3-4 hours before the race started. It started to clear up quite nicely and it then started to get a bit hot and humid (~26 degrees). Indeed, when the race started, I sweated quite a bit in the first 30mins due to the humidity and running to try to get into a good position. Realizing I would burn out and run out of water, I wisely scaled back my aggressive strategy. I ended up following the person in front of me even there were long queues on some of the narrow sections of the course. My goal was to get to the first CP1 before dark and I managed to achieve that. The 22.3km section took just under 4hrs and 30mins. Most importantly, I estimated I would have enough fluids to get me up to Mt. Mito (1,500m,7-800m elevation gain) and down to the next check point.

CP2
It got dark and my headlamp was on. This would be my first time trail-running at night. It wasn’t so bad in the beginning and it was interesting to see nothing but patches of light 20-30m ahead of you. BUT then it started to rain… It was a light rain at first but it started to pour! So much for jogging! The trail towards Mt. Mito had a lot of up and down sections with a lot of dirt which meant everything got wet, muddy and slippery. At this point, everyone was being very cautious of the people in front and behind them. I slipped twice on the mud but was able to land softly. I saw a few people wipe out and you could hear them cursing from a far distance. Anyways, it was one heck of a slog to get up Mt. Mito but when I did, the rain eventually stopped and the skies started to clear up. I drank the last of my fluids but with 5km left to the next CP, it was downhill to the checkpoint and it felt good jogging again. Got to CP2 just under the 10hour point. I was about 90mins slower than my target pace.

CP3
I was feeling pretty good so I didn’t spend too much time at CP2. Up to this point, I had eaten one onigiri, two nutrition bars and had one gel pack. Bad mistake! At about midnight, I bonked. Much like some of the runners that I had passed who laid down on the side of the trail to sleep, I had to do the same. After about a 30-45mins nap later, I ate another onigiri and got a nice dose of BCAA. It took about 20mins to kick in but I started to jog pretty solid again. After getting to the top of Mt. Gozen (1,405m), I knew there was only two more mountains to go and both were lower than 1,100m. At Mt. Odake, I decided to eat the rest of my food and make a nice dash along the nice runnable trail to the CP3. I crossed the marker at the 15hour point.

Finish
The sky was completely clear now and the stars were out. At CP3, the night view of the nearby cities and towns was magnificent. Other than a small uphill to Mt. Hinode, it was all flat or downhill. Feeling more alert and energetic because of the food, I felt I could go pretty fast in the last 13km. Indeed I did! I averaged just under 7km/hour and I felt strong enough to overtake about 30-40 people before finishing at 5:56am. Overall, I’m VERY glad to have finished the race without any injuries. It was also valuable learning experience for me with respect to nutrition management (very important with my first IM at the end of next month!). On a related note, I went for a recovery swim the next day and after weighing myself, I estimated I lost about 2-3kg during the race. Anyways, I may do this event again someday but will probably focus on exploring other trail running events.