Nagaragawa Olympic Distance Triathlon is a dependable race. It is one of Japan’s oldest triathlons which was first held in 1986. Even in 2020, at the height of Covid, the race was held. Whatever the weather, it goes ahead. As the athlete guide says, it will be held “rain or shine”. And shine is what you usually get…lots of it. The advantage for the race organisers is that it is held by the Nagaragawa River on access roads. This means that there are no public road closures, and there is little danger of weather affecting the race. Although the age group race is fairly small, with fewer than 300 taking part, the event is quite important as it also hosts the Junior, U19 and U23 National Championships.
I first did the OD race in 2015 when the temperature was just below 40C. At that time, I complained of the lack of ice or water for dousing the athletes and hoped the organisers would learn from the convoy of ambulances ferrying away people suffering from heat exhaustion. They did. This year, the aid stations were excellent. At every 1.25 km, buckets full of ice were ready for athletes to scoop blissfully cold water over their sweltering bodies, and at another point on the run course there was even a wonderful man handing out bags of ice. The medics were not too busy, and I didn’t hear one ambulance siren.
I signed up for Nagaragawa very late, as it was the only race still open for entries back in mid-June. As the race approached, I started to worry about the heat and considered how to avoid heat stress. I got out my old sleeveless wetsuit and sewed up and then patched its long tears with bike inner tube. However, when I did a comparison with my full wetsuit, I found it would be 2 minutes slower over 1500 metres (see previous post). So I opted for my full wetsuit, but I would take it slowly on the swim. (Back in 2015 I had overheated on the swim and couldn’t recover on the bike.) For the bike leg, I had decided to wear a better-ventilated road helmet rather than my TT helmet. I also had an extra 500 ml bottle on the frame – something I never usually do for an Olympic distance race. For the run, I took a small cooler bag with me and filled it with ice from a convenience store near my hotel. I placed this on the run course when I rode out to the race on Sunday morning.
Another change I made to my bike was to fit tubeless tyres. I have been reluctant to change to tubeless, despite the clear advantages. You can run lower pressures, which means a more comfortable ride and better handling. The rolling resistance is lower than with inner tubes, and the sealant will automatically fix small punctures. After endless trouble trying to get tubeless to work on my road bike, I had absolutely no trouble fitting Continental GP5000TR tyres to the Flo wheels on my TT bike. They lose little pressure overnight, and the feel on the road is great. I barely noticed the bumps on the Nagaragawa course.
As usual, I stayed in the Sanco Inn near Kuwana Station. For dinner, I found a new Italian restaurant called Chill just a few minutes away. I had green salad, potato salad, and an ōmori (large-size) tomato and anchovy pasta. It was excellent. On race day, I got up at 4:15, ate my usual bowl of muesli and banana, had a cup of tea, and headed out just after 5:30. It is a pleasant 12 km ride up the Nagaragawa to the race, usually only marred by the need to carry a heavy bag. This year, I took my bike-packing saddlebag which worked brilliantly. The early morning ride up the narrow spit of land dividing the Ibi River from the Nagaragawa was a perfect start to the day.
The race is logistically very easy. Everything you need is in tents set out on tennis courts. Registration and bike check are from 6:30 to 8:00, and the race starts at 8:30. The only race briefing is a 10-minute online video, but it is not compulsory. There are no health checks, no liability waivers, no nothing – I kept feeling I must have missed something.
The course is also beautifully simple. The swim is up and down the river twice, the bike is up and down the river four times to the north of transition, and the run is up and down the river four times to the south. T1 and T2 have to be the shortest distances of any race in Japan.
At 8:10, I put on my wetsuit and quickly got into the 26.5C water to keep somewhat cool. After watching the first three waves set off, I lined up in Wave 4 for the floating start. I was at the front of the wave, as I expected to be one of the faster swimmers. As the klaxon sounded, I got my first unpleasant surprise of the day. Instead of pulling steadily away and catching the wave ahead, I got mashed and bashed by people coming around me to the left, right, and over the top. I felt my heartrate rise, so I followed my plan and just swam at a steady pace. At the turnaround buoy, there was the inevitable crush, and this continued all the way back to the start. It is always the same at Nagaragawa. There is a rope of buoys dividing the outward and return lanes, with the return lane too narrow for the number of swimmers. For the whole 375 metres I tried to find space to swim but could not get away from flailing arms and kicking feet. There was one person in my wave who I really couldn’t shake off. He was on my left side, the river bank on my right, and I had nowhere to go. With each of his strokes he hit me, and with each of mine I tried not to hit him. I thought that he would just pull away, but this continued for a frustrating 100 metres. I would speed up and pull away, but moments later he would be back pummelling my left side. Triathlon swims can be a curious thing.
At the end of the first lap, you leave the water, run up and down a pontoon, and then jump in for the second lap. This gave me the chance to sprint along the pontoon and get away from my assailant. I managed to do this, and the second lap of the swim was blissfully incident free. As I exited for T1, I looked at my watch and was surprised to see such a slow time of over 28:30. I had planned to go slowly, but not that slowly. I made up a bit of time with a brisk T1 and was soon riding with a slight tailwind up the familiar riverside roads. The course is the same as for the Nagaragawa 102 middle-distance race, so have ridden these roads many, many times. With a small field of 250, I was able to ride much of the bike leg on my own. In the past, I have got very frustrated by the long lines of people drafting, who make it very hard to keep to a steady pace. This time it wasn’t until well into the third lap that I passed three people drafting, and then discovered that they had latched onto me. They passed me, so I dropped back over 10 metres and took a breather. At the start of the 4th lap, I dug deep and soon found myself back in open road. That was the only time that I had to vary my pace and effort. I think it is important to avoid surges in effort when it is so hot. I also paid attention to fluid, drinking all of the 750 ml in the aero bottle on my TT extensions and most of the extra bottle on the frame. I had a full concentration of Top Speed Ultra Mineral Tablets in the water which works well for me. I ate just one Amino Vital energy gel, as I had tried two in a previous race but started feeling a bit nauseous.
I arrived back in transition to my second unpleasant surprise. There was another bike on my rack. Athlete 6009, Kuroda-san, was just leaving transition in a yellow trisuit. In reality, I shouldn’t have been surprised given my slow swim. Looking now at the results list, Kuroda was two minutes faster than me on the swim, and just one minute slower on the bike. But at the time, I was a bit shocked to realise that in this terrible heat, I had some chasing to do. I spotted a yellow trisuit ahead and gradually chased him down. I neared him at the first turnaround at 1.25 km, but he surged away, and it was not until the end of lap 1 that I caught him. I glanced down at his race number and was perplexed to find it was 3509, not 6009. Somehow, I had been chasing the wrong man. At least it had made for a fast first lap. I then spotted 6009 way behind me, and realised that I was well clear. Not wanting to blow up, I let 3509 run away from me, and I settled into a steady pace. At each aid station, I stopped to pour ice water over me, and at my cooler bag I grabbed a bag of ice. I did the same when I got to the nice man with the ice, so by the end of the race my tri suit was bulging with bags of tepid water. However, it worked. I had perhaps the most comfortable run I’ve ever had in the heat. My time was not fast, but few people can run fast in that heat. Only elite triathlete Takatoshi Yumura, seemed oblivious to the heat, running a 34:21 – over three minutes faster than the next person in.
After the race, I cooled down with a complimentary tub of shaved ice, picked up a 2 kg bag of free rice, and started my long journey home. I had a 15 km ride back to the hotel, and then four trains with three long transfers, carrying my bike, my gear, and that bag of rice. At what age will I decide it is time to find a slightly easier path through life?
hayama3tri 