I ran the 20th leg of the two day event which was the Sunday morning anchor leg. It was a flat course, and the longest leg of the ekiden. Once again, I was on an “ace” leg (an area ran by the best runners of each team), so I was running against some fast guys. The fastest of which were from mainland college teams whom, I guess, are originally from Okinawa.

My leg had a “kuriage” start which happens when the front team is more than 10 minutes ahead of the other teams. When the front team is 10 mins ahead, all teams still waiting for the handoff start together. There were nine of us starting together. The Miyako team was coming in at close to ten minutes, so we would all start on their handoff. Here they come…and…we’re off!

I took the early lead, and led the first 3km. We were going about 3:00 per/km pace. There was one runner on my heels. Everyone else was back-a-ways. My team car hadn’t caught up yet because of the kuriage start. We were in last place. Our fast runners were good to very good, and are slow runners were just really slow. We placed last in several legs that morning which really hurt us overall. Usually the team car would be behind me calling the shots, but the sounds I was hearing was from a second team on my tail.

The Okinawa city runner caught up to me at 3km, and we ran steady at that pace through 7. He then would hold that pace for the remainder of our race, and place second out of all the competitors of that leg. He was a running stud. I’d fell off his pace by just a few seconds, and was about 10 meters behind passing through the 10km split at roughly mid-32 minutes.

The second team on my tail was Tomishiro. This runner, another mainland Japan college stud, tried to pass me several times over the next 30 minutes. I’m not sure how many times he had surged to pass, but each time he would surge on me, I’d stay with him. I would recover easily after the surges, but I didn’t have enough speed to break away from him. I think this is because all my training this cycle has been long distance marathon oriented. Eventually I was handed some warm gel drink which I thought would help, but didn’t at all. It was at this point that he was able to make some distance between us.

My legs were shot. done. out of juice. Until I turned the corner, and saw my wife’s mom cheering for me trying to run with me (i heard how sore she was the days following). “Wow, you run fast!” she would later say. Just up the bend, I turned to the left, and saw my wife and my daughter cheering me on. I could hear their cheers, and it gave me immediate power. I looked up at the team ahead of me, and re-focuesed my efforts. After the next turn was a straighaway, and I would try to catch him there. I thought to myself, “I’ve got at least 4k left. I’ve never made a sprint to the finish with this much ground still to cover.” And in a final effort, I gathered all I had, and went at him.

Steve was just ahead waiting for me to pass by and as I passed I was digging deep. “ARRRHH!!” Steve saw I was going for it, and echoed encouragement from behind. “They’re just up ahead!” “The pack is just up ahead!” “Go, Will, Go!!”

I didn’t catch any of them. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t move any faster. I was hitting my legs like you’d do to make a horse gallop. Even as I covered the final 400 meters, my speed didn’t change as much as my effort did. Next year I want more speed work going into this event. I finished eighth overall which only brought our team up one spot from last for the morning portion of the second day of the 295.4 kilometer ekiden.

20th leg - 17.1 km (10.7 mi). my time 57:23

day 2 morning, ginowan placed 13th

day 2 afternoon, ginowan placed 9th

Ginowan finished 10th overall for this two day event. One place and 2 minutes 45 seconds better than last year. 17:48:08 official time.

overall team times