In 2018, the JTU introduced a new National Championship race as a season finale. To qualify, you must win an age-group ranking race during the season. This means that the field is very competitive, with many of the fastest amateur triathletes taking part. After two years of cancellations due to Covid, I was looking forward racing again in Miyazaki.
The race is held in Miyazaki Rinkai Park, just five kilometres north of the city centre. The park runs along the shoreline of two artificial bays which are supposed to provide safe swimming. It is a training base for the national team and a great location for the race, with good facilities and wide grass areas shaded by palm trees. There is even a cafe right in the middle of the run course, which follows the boardwalk around the bays. The bike course is on the coastal motorway, so it is straight and flat.
I flew down to Miyazaki with my wife, Miki. We planned to stay Sunday night and then go sightseeing on Monday. Staying an extra night after a race is such a luxury for me, as I usually have to rush home for work on Mondays. We stayed at my usual hotel, Minshuku Inn Miyazaki Yurakuan (民宿innみやざき湯楽庵). It looks rather grim from the outside, but the rooms have been renovated and they are very large. There is also a massive wooden bath in each of the second-floor rooms.
On the Saturday, there were elite World Cup races with a surprising number of foreign athletes, but I arrived at the venue too late to see these races. However, I managed to catch the tail end of the kids race just as a young girl and boy sprinted towards the finish straight. The boy edged ahead, and as he crossed the bike timing mat, he threw his arms into the air and stopped. The crowd shouted at him to continue, but it was too late. The girl sprinted ahead to the finish tape, while the boy looked on in confusion.
I also caught up with Joe Tanaka of Ceepo Bikes who looked at my ageing Specialized and told me that I need a new bike. He also informed me that the swim would likely be cancelled on Sunday due to waves. A strong north-easterly wind was sending waves through the narrow opening of the bay and throwing the marker buoys in all directions. The elite races had gone ahead, but apparently a rescue boat had nearly capsized, so the junior races had become duathlons.
I slept poorly on Sunday night and was up at 4 a.m. despite the 9 a.m. start. I had pre-race nerves. After a long season, this would be the age group rankings decider. I was in a dead heat with Abe-san, with both of us on 4,000 points. The ranking system is bewilderingly complex and ever-changing, so I never understand it fully. However, it seems you get 1,000 points for a win, as long as the race hasn’t been shortened by more than a stipulated amount. Your four highest-scoring races count towards the rankings, so you can get a maximum of 4,000 points. To prevent a tie, the Miyazaki championship race has 1,100 points for first place. In other words, it was all down to this race. I was fairly confident of my fitness, but for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about punctures and other mishaps. I checked my gear for the hundredth time and headed out to the race venue on my bike.
I arrived just before transition opened at 7 a.m. The air was cool, but the wind was gentle, and the bay looked fairly flat. However, a message written on a whiteboard announced that the swim would be reduced to 400 metres due to high winds.
I racked up my bike, fiddled around with my gear, walked transition twice, but still had over two hours to wait till the start. I sat down at a bench beneath a palm tree and waited as the wind gradually picked up. From 8:30 till 9:00, there was a compulsory swim “warm-up”. I waited till 8:50 so I wouldn’t have to stand around getting cold for too long, but as I entered the water, the lifeguards told me the warm-up was finished.
The water was still fairly flat, but as we waited shivering for the race to start, the wind suddenly picked up and whitecaps formed. As the starter klaxon sounded, and Wave 1 set off, the water was already foaming. Five minutes later, my wave – the second of the two Championship waves – started. As usual, the groupings made no sense. The first wave contained men aged up to 59 years, and the second wave men over 60 and all the women. This ignores the fact that many of these women are the fastest swimmers in the race. I quickly discovered this as they swam left, right, and straight over me, adding to the wild chaos of the rough water. The first buoy was only 150 metres away, but it seemed like the leaders were turning it while I had barely left the beach. The sea was churning and the swell head-on, but good swimmers have no trouble with this. Despite swimming in all weather in Hayama, I simply can’t swim when it is rough. On the way to the second buoy, I got my breathing under control, and by the time I was heading back to the beach, I felt like I was into the swing of things. I needed another kilometre to make up for my poor start, but instead I was back on the beach and struggling with my infernal Hubb zip.
Despite my dreadful swim, I was second out of the water in my age group, and I left transition first. I rode the 700 metres to the motorway, up the slip road, and straight into the teeth of the gale. What a way to start a bike leg. I tucked in as aero as possible, pedalled till my thighs screamed, and tried to hold 32 km/h. One by one, I passed the faster swimmers who had left me thrashing around in the water. Many were shamelessly drafting, but I was out on my own. As the first over-60 male out of transition, I did the whole 40 km alone. The course is a squashed, elongated “M”, which means you ride 6 km north, into the wind, back 4 km, north again for 4 km, and then back 6 km towards transition. You do this twice. After 3 km, I saw a group of 10 or 12 men flying towards me, and a kilometre later, another bigger group. There were JTU officials on motorbikes, but they seemed to be doing nothing. I saw these groups throughout the race, and they were always together. Behind me, was another big group of older men, working together to catch me.
It is hard to know what to think or do about drafting. The drafting rule for this race was 10 metres, but clearly it was being ignored. Even if you follow the 10 metre rule, the drag reduction of a lone rider drafting another lone rider at 10 metres is apparently 33.4 watts or 13.4% at 45 km/h <Swiss Side>. In a line of 10 riders, the effect is greater. And this is all within the rules of triathlon. If you bend the rules and get a little closer, the effect is greater still; at 8 metres (a distance few officials will pay attention to), you get 20% drag reduction. This is a hell of a lot. Once you get the kind of drafting which was happening ahead of me, some of the riders are barely pedalling <ScienceDirect>. In triathlon, it impacts not just the bike, but also the run. In other words, even if you follow the drafting rules, a rider who gets lucky and tags 10 metres behind a slightly faster group will have an enormous advantage over a rival who doesn’t get lucky.
I don’t remember the last time I pushed so hard on the bike. My Garmin lap data shows the extremes of riding alternately into the wind and with the wind. My one-kilometre lap averages varied from 30.3 km/h to 47.9 km/h…all on the flat. My top speed was 50.9 km/h, and my average speed was 36.6 km/h, which was surprising given the wind. Curiously, my upwind laps were slower in the first half of the race than the second, but conversely, my downwind laps were faster in the first half than the second. It seems that as the race progressed, I was unconsciously pushing hard into the wind, and slightly less so downwind. I heard a cyclocross commentator the other day saying that racers know to push harder on the tough sections, and less so on the easier sections. Does this make sense? Do we lose relatively more by slowing on tougher sections of a course?
I was very relieved to get to T2 without mishap. I had seen two crashes on the course, probably caused by the wind. With bikes travelling both ways on a single carriageway, some of them at 50 km/h, it felt like a disaster waiting to happen. I slotted my bike into an empty rack and just needed to complete the run in a reasonable time.
I left T2 with heavy legs but was immediately given a boost by spotting Miki waving and cheering by the side of the path. This pushed me up to 4 min/km pace, but that was the best I could do. The course winds around the park, doubling back a couple of times on each lap, which allows you to see the people behind you. If there had been anyone close, perhaps I could have gone faster. But feeling that I was well ahead lured me back into a steady 4:07 pace. On lap 2, I was passed by the incredible Takahashi-san, who at 55 is still one of the fastest cyclists in Japan (he was 4th overall on the bike leg). He grinned at me, patted my back, and raced ahead. The faster runner was the overall race winner, 26-year-old Kugayama, who ran under 33 minutes despite the gale. It is great to be in a race with so many fast triathletes. On lap 3, my friend and long-time rival, Shuji Sawada, passed me on his way to a 38:16 run time. He is 59 now, so next year he will be in my age group. As for me, I finished the run in 40:52.
I often get chided for being dissatisfied with my race times. Looking at the data on my watch, I couldn’t help feeling dissatisfied: my swim was weak, my bike average, and my run slow. I had won the age group ranking, placed first in the national championship, but that run time bothered me. I suppose if I was always satisfied, I would simply accept the gradual decline that comes with age. Instead I feel the urge to improve my run before next year when I will once again be hanging on to the heels of Sawada-san.
Meeting up with friends and rivals after the race reminded me yet again of how good it is race JTU triathlons. In my daily life, I rarely meet outgoing, emotional, enthusiastic people my age. Triathlon attracts society’s outliers – those naturally optimistic people who despite their advancing years, still get up to train in the wind and the cold and the rain at 5 a.m. I chatted with Sawada-san, who told me how much he is looking forward to racing in the same age group as me. I am sure he relishes the chance to pay me back for my rare win in 2019. Next, I met my old Shonan Bellmare swim squad friend, Akiko Takahashi, with whom I used to share a lane. Once again she won the 65-69 age group. I talked to the flying Takahashi-san, like me a former mountain biker, who told me about some off-road triathlons that we should do next year. And I chatted with Ishikawa-san who I first got to know in the Gold Coast. He is fluent in English, so we always talk at length about races. Unfortunately, he had punctured at the beginning of the race and DNFed. He was really disappointed as he had been in first place in his age group rankings. The same thing happened to him three years ago, which doubled the blow. Finally, I got to meet Abe-san who I had pipped at the post. He was full of warmth and energy and gracious praise for my result.
After the awards ceremony, perhaps the first to be held in Japan for three years, Miki and I walked to Kitchen & Bar Pepe which I had last visited with Youri three years ago. This time, it was full to the brim, and the sign outside read closed, but they saw me in my salt-encrusted trisuit and showed us to a table. Later, the elderly owners told us that a third of restaurants in the area had closed due to Covid, which meant that they were now overwhelmed with customers.
Back at the hotel, I soaked in the huge bath, and then we took a taxi to Chom Chom, a small Vietnamese restaurant tucked away in a city centre back street. It turned out to be the culinary discovery of the year. The chef produced the most delectable herb-infused dishes I can remember tasting. Despite there being little choice for vegetarians on the menu, she adapted a range of dishes for me, some served with side dishes of herbs to munch on. It was a fine way to finish the day.
On Monday morning, we took another taxi to the airport and left my bike and bags at the Global Wifi cum luggage store. We then took two trains south to Aoshima to visit the island shrine that Youri and Asako had themselves visited a few years ago. It was a wonderful place. You reach the island by a short bridge which transports you into a sub-tropical paradise of shrines, palm trees, and devil’s washboard. The latter consists of straight lines of basalt stretching out into the sea. From a distance, it looks like an artificial structure, but it is actually a natural formation. The main shrine is tucked in amongst the palm trees, 5,000 of which fill the tiny island. We then walked around the island which offers beautiful views in each direction.
We also visited the lovely Miyako Botanical Gardens. at the other end of the bridge on the mainland. There are several glasshouses with exotic plants, as well as yet more palm trees. After an excellent fish lunch at Hidemaru, we had plenty of time to spare, so we walked north along the coast in the direction of the airport. There is a broad coastal path, inevitably lined with palm trees, and a long curving expanse of sand. We walked through the massive prefectural sports park, but sadly did not have time to visit the Hyuga Keishuen traditional gardens. That will have to wait until next time. We took a bus from outside the park to Tamoto Shrine, and from there walked the last kilometre to the airport.
Final Age group rankings, standard distance
Final Age group rankings, long distance
More Photos of Aoshima
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