Sunday, February 2nd 2020
Morimoto Hospital Team
Hiroshima Prefecture
ONDO City
Below are posts from previous years running it:
2019 ONDO EKIDEN BLOG
2014 ONDO EKIDEN BLOG
1. Rudyard Brettargh
2. Josh Wisniewski
3. Jordan Langen
4. Danny Matson
5. Yoshiaki Mesaki
6. Yasuhiro Yoshinaga
7. Daisuke Sato
Was super excited for the Ekiden this year because of my buddies that came out to run. Rud, Josh and Danny all made the trip to Ondo and would be running this year!
This year I was running the 3rd section for the 3rd time total. Here is picture on map of where it is:
After feeling super slow at the Kurahashi Ekiden 3 weeks back decided to cut out alcohol until the Ondo Ekiden. Felt good to shape up from that.
Had been doing Hiyama consistently had even got up to 21 times in January. Did a few runs with Shin-chan which was really helpful. So crazy how light and fast he is!
The bottom of the right foot has been off/on about how it's feeling. Somedays it doesn't seem to bother me at all while other days can barely walk. Think am over compensating for the ankle not being good and putting too much pressure on the front of the foot. Because of this, was not able to do consistent interval sessions which was frustrating.
Before the Ekiden, I biked the 3rd section once and visualized what it would be like while running. Saw Yasushi and his construction gang.
It was tough without being able to do much speedwork to know what kind of pace was going to be possible but knew I wanted to at least beat last year's time of 12:35. Was going back and forth between deciding on whether to do split calculations in min/mil or min/km but ended up sticking with good ol miles. Should make the official change soon and finally start getting used to using min/km.
Josh, Keisuke and his Vietnamese friend stayed over the night before the race and Josh, Shin-chan and I hit up the Kurahashi Onsen to soak the old bones.
The day of the race, Yoshiaki and Miho picked us in the AM and we drove our section of our course on the way to the Ondo shimin center.
This year we had the Aquathlon Staff blue shirts for our uniform matched with blue headbands to bring a little flare to it.
Sat through the ritual pre-race ceremony and was getting excited for the race. It felt like a different Japan having good buddies there.
After the pre-race ceremony was finished we split up into different cars with Midori Pharmacy staff and were driven to our respective relay segments. Wished Josh good luck at the section 2 spot and continued to the section 3 location.
Awesome picture taken by Matsuzaki Sensei of the school ground location where we start and run south along the ocean coast.
Already at the 3rd relay segment was Keisuke, Nihei, Misato and Matsuzaki sensei waiting to cheer. It was so cool to have everyone there and made me even more anxious/excited to be running soon.
Quickly changed into running gear and did some light warmups around the ground while waiting for the 2 rounds of role-call that we do before the race actually starts. Was fun warming up and the legs were feeling pretty good.
Josh would be arriving at the 3rd section start at about 11am so was doing final pick-ups and accells before he got there. Was thinking with Rud/Josh running the first two segments that we would be one of the top 5 or so runners but believe Josh came in 12th to pass me off the red ribbon.
Was out of the gates pretty fast as usual but could tell within the first couple minutes that was not going to be able to keep a 5-minute pace for the whole thing and had to slow down right away. Despite feeling pretty decent before the race, could tell the legs did not have enough intervals and speedwork in them to hold a 5-minute pace and just tried to hang on to whatever pace I could. Lot's of familiar faces were cheering and friends had cow cattle bells rattling. Other onlookers would say Morimoto Iin! when they would see me run past and that was always funny. I'm sure many wondered what half our team of foreigner's connection to Morimoto Iin was. Haha.
The first 1km was a a little over 3min/km pace and remember hitting the first mile at 5:07 and was worried what the second mile pace might become. Kept trying to keep the leg cadence up, stride length long, and trying to keep the feet underneath the body. Was pacing people here at there and one junior high school kid tried to keep up for a minute or so after pacing him. Was kind of comical hearing his breath rate increase and increase until he was donzo.
With less than 1km to go saw Morimoto-Sensei and Kayoko in the same section cheering that they were at last year. It seems like that is the toughest section the race being so close to finishing but still having just enough to go that you can't give it your all yet. Tried picking up the pace as much as possible and finally the bridge was getting very close. Saw Danny in the distance and tried to pick up the pace even more. Started feeling nauseous and knew that was a good indicator of pace. Passed the sash of to Danny and saw him start cruising his way to Yoshiaki.
Here were the splits for this year:
After finishing walked around a little and then went and chatted with Yuma and Miho while we waited for the Midori Pharmacy runner Mino-san to finish. Once he did, we got in the car and picked up Yoshiaki and drove to the end just in time to see Daisuke as he was approaching the finish line. We just missed him finishing across the line but others took pics/vids!
We ended up finishing 8th overall which we were all satisfied with! To get in the top 5, we were only about 2 minutes off so we think that is something that is attainable for next year!
Without going to the awards ceremony we went quickly to the Clayton Bay Hotel and got to hop in the onsen for about 40min before heading to lunch together! It was super fun going there as a team and getting to show friends how nice of a place it was there.
The Clayton is a members only facility and Morimoto Sensei was able to give us all tickets to get in!
Didn't take any naked shots this year..haha
The 4 gaijins had a 20min sauna sesh together and afterwards we got dressed and made our way to go eat lunch at the Kure Kaigun place that we went to last year.
Didn't get a full group picture here but had our fare share of drinks/food/laughs before making our way back to Kurahashi.
2020 Ondo Ekiden Data
2014: 12:00 (garmin data)
2019: 12:35
2020: 12:17
This was by the the most fun have had at an Ekiden and really fun to make a whole day out of it. Was cool seeing Rud and Josh run their first ever Ekiden and super cool to see our whole team do good overall.
Have a relay marathon at the end of this month and am excited to run with a bunch of people in Ujina!
