Oshima Race

Last weekend I ran my first race ever! I did a 5k. I went with a caravan of friends doing 2k, 5k, 10k and a half marathon (21k I think). It was such a great experience for me.

Here are some of us with Choruru (my prefecture's mascot). Choruru is especially famous this year because the National Athletic Meet will be held in our prefecture this year (it rotates between the 47 prefectures every year!!).

We caravaned over to Suo-Oshima on Saturday afternoon, with the races beginning around 9am the next morning. My race was at 12:30, but I still left from our cabin to the race early with everyone, to do some major cheering on! I think every single person that ran did better than they expected.

I ran the 5K in 31 minutes and 20 seconds. Pretty slow by any "runner" standards, but I didn't even start training until mid-January (3 weeks training) and this was my first race ever! Since the marathon, I have still been running most days, and I can already see extra improvement. I'm hoping to run my next race (6k) in April in about the same amount of time. Maybe like 33 minutes, but an extra kilometer! :)

Btw, the best part of the day (February 6th!!!) was that whenever each race started, they played the Star Wars theme music. All the runners above are pouring all their energy out to the famous and dramatic John Williams score.