Suwako Half.

This is the quote from my post to Namban mailing list.
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Last Sunday, three Nambanners ran Suwako Half Marathon. It was a beautiful autumn day at the lake side in Nagano prefecture. Although the temperature was a bit high for this time of the year, there isn't much to complain about the race. Actually, this was the one of the best half marathon I have ever run. The course is flat and very scenic, the weather is cooler than Tokyo, and race organization was excellent!

We should have had a great race, I don't know why we, I mean Shoji-san and I both had such a bad race there.

I was aiming to make sub 90min, but was already breathing miserably hard at the first k! First 5k was the worst struggle to keep up the target pace. Coach Larner, who had done his own 30k race pace run successfully on Friday was there with his sore legs to pace me. I had to try hard, but I just couldn't keep up the pace. My pace was a kind of settled around 4:20 to 4:25/k pace and still struggled all the way to the finish. My time was 1h32m20s. Became 5th in the 40's women category. This is the only bright side of the day. It's sometimes good to become old.

Shoji-san had even worse race than me. He was running with me until 3k mark, I thought he was running easy, easier than me, but he suddenly disappeared right after that. He said he just couldn't run and wanted to stop already at 7k point. But he respectably completed the race with 1h42m09s.

Brett seems to be the only person among us who enjoyed the event. Here is his comment.

I ran 1:30:17. I tried to do my best as a pacer for Mika until near the end when I kind of embarrassingly ran a 2:59 final km, probably faster than the winner's. I thought this was a fantastic event and would make a perfect addition to the annual calendar of major Namban events since it is 3 weeks before Ohtawara, just the right amount of time for a final tune-up / fitness check. I will race it next year.

I agree. It's a great race. I recommend it. But there are two things I would like to complain to the race director. Wrong kilometer marks at several points and 5 boxes of tissue paper is not so attractive for the top 6 prize....

◎This week
Mon: no run due to work
Tue: 1hr fartlek, 12k
Wed: 5k TT + jog, 15k
Thu: 14k easy
Fri: 3k x 1k at 4:10/k pace with 300m recovery+jog, 10k total
Sat: no run due to work
Sun: Suwako Half Marathon + jog, 26.1k

Week total: 77.1k
Month total: 436.9k