200 teams of four.
100 kilometers over rugged terrain.
48 hours.
The 2008 Oxfam Japan Trailwalker
My team for the 2008 Oxfam Trailwalker had a rocky star. In March, we originally began as four eager hikers/fundraisers, all with hectic Spring schedules to sync-up. This forced one of us to back out, leaving three. Still eager, we were now worried and pressed to find a fourth (required) member by May.
The three of us spent much of March and every weekend in
April getting out to the mountains, to test our hiking
mettle. 100 km would be a long way, especially on the hilly course near Hakone. We focused our training assaults around Chichibu, one of the few mountainous regions of Saitama prefecture. Each hike grew longer. Focusing on about a 4km/hour pace, we finally worked our way up to a 55km hike, two weeks before the actual event. This was our longest training hike, a little over half the distance of the Trailwalker event.
A week later, just one week before raceday, we secured our fourth team member, C-Dawg. Just in the nick of time, too. We wouldn't have been able to start the race with just three of us. Unfortunately, we hadn't been able to train with our new hiking buddy, but he seemed to be in good enough shape to join us for at least the first half. We would be allowed to finish with three, as long as we began with four. C-Dawg, due to prior plans, would have to drop out at the halfway point, in order to head home. It was all going to work out just fiiiiiine.
The race began on a Saturday morning, so we all headed down to stay in a ryokan near Odawara on Friday night. There were actually 8 of us, including another four-member team of English teachers. We chatted; showed off our trail mixes and hiking treats; talked about our pace, goals, worries; and gave each other motivation and good night wishes before heading to bed.
The race began the next morning at 09:00 in Odawara. We made it to the starting line in good spirits, seeing all the other teams and volunteers buzzing around Shiroyama track. After all of the obligatory stretching, last-minute bag checks, restroom breaks, and photo-ops, the race was on!
I felt like running. Even with my backpack on. I'm a runner; it's what I do. But I knew I still had a long hike ahead of me, and the course would roll up and down many mountains. Probably not wise to start off too quickly. Besides, I had three other team members. We were going to have to stick together to get this thing done.
The first few hours were really slow-going. After about 30 minutes, we ran into a bottleneck where all 800 participants had to walk single-file. Eventually, things spaced out a bit, and we continued on. And up. And down. And up again. Into the night, we moseyed. Thankfully, the weather cooperated for the first day. Good thing, too, because I didn't really pack any rain gear. I figured that, if it rained, I'd just get wet. That would come later...
After 13 hours and 39 km, we made it to Checkpoint 4 of 8. There we said farewell to C-Dawg, who had done an awesome job of keeping up with us, staying motivated, and keeping it real. At Checkpoint 4, we also did some stretching, hydrating and chowing down on some good vittles. Everyone knows that food tastes best after a long hike. Like Powerbars - those things really don't taste good unless you've earned them.
We continued on what now had become our night-hike around 11:00pm. This section of the course featured a steep downhill, which was quite difficult to traverse with our itty bitty flashlights. Around this section, my feet started to bleat like scared little sheep on a dark and dangerous prairie - sheep waiting, eagerly, to be counted one by one. After 6 grueling hours and 16 more kilometers, we had reached Checkpoint 5. Here we took a long rest, long being a relative term, of 3 hours.
That three hours, though, gave us all the rest we needed. In the morning, we met up with our support crew, angels bearing trail mix and brownies. One of our supporters had actually been a member of the other team of English teachers. However, she had to retire from the race due to giant foot blisters. We were glad to see she was still able to participate in the event, at least from the supporting side.
We began Day Two with high spirits, renewed smiles, but still no rain gear. The rain came in around noon. Luckily, we were under a thick canopy during the rainstorm. I'd like to say I didn't get too wet, but the fact is I got soaked. And the canopy, which had sort of sheltered us from the rain, continued to drip down on us long after the storm had passed. Doh. However, I was wearing a technical shirt that seemed to dry pretty well after a few hours. Ha-ha...Me-1, Nature-0. Still twenty kilometers to go.
These final twenty kilometers proved to be quite difficult. Not for me, but for my team as a unit. One of my team members started getting nauseous with just 10 kilometers left to go. Our pace slowed to a crawl as we traversed the most difficult mountain passes on the course. Why did they have to put them at the end!? Stinkin' mountains.
It was nearly 1:00am when we made it to the Checkpoint 8, the final checkpoint before the Finish. We took another long, much-needed, well-deserved rest. Long, once again being a relative term, we resumed hiking after only two hours of sleep. It hadn't been a very restful sleep for me. I was crammed in with other resting hikers, half-covered by the tent canopy overhead. This meant that, as the rain began to fall again at this ungodly hour, my face was getting smacked with a heapin' helpin' of drippity drops directly from the sky, as well as the run-off from the tent canopy. Doh.
Startled awake, I needed some time to get my bearings and remember where I was. It was almost 3:00am on Sunday morning, I had hiked 94 kilometers over the course of 42 hours with my group. We only had six left, to complete in as many hours. With a renewed sense of purpose, we continued on the final stretch.
The final, difficult stretch. Seriously, I thought, does this uphill ever end?! We were reaching the end, of everything. The end of the course, the end of these two days that had seemed to melt into one, the end of our wits, the end of our strength and vitality. It became difficult to trudge through the early morning rain, as we moved upward and onward. Even when the clouds parted and the sun came out to greet us, there was hardly a spring to our step.
All of a sudden, after an hour-long uphill struggle, we were at a peak. The final peak of the course. There were three volunteers at this summit, all wearing clown wigs and ringing bells. They cheered us on, reminding us that we only had two kilometers left. Two downhill kilometers.
For the next kilometer, I did what I had been feeling like doing from the start - I ran. Well, sort of. It was more like a downhill hobble, to-and-fro. Anyhow, I was definitely covering some ground. My other team members kept up pretty well, too. And before we knew it, we only had one kilometer left.
We slowed to a walk again, mostly because this section was on asphalt, and my feet were absolutely killing me. We rounded a field and spotted the finish line in the distance. I convinced my teammates to jog into the finish, to wrap this thing up right. As we came in, the other team and our support crew cheered us on. And just like that, we finished the 2008 Oxfam Trailwalker 100km Challenge in 44 hours, 43 minutes. 109th place/200 teams.
