Another ekiden failure

Posted: January 17th, 2007 | Author: amake | Filed under: Humor, My life, Technology | 4 Comments »

I ran another ekiden this past Sunday. It was the Seto Ekiden, a mostly local event with sections of pretty similar length to the one I ran previously. Since the beginning of the new year I’ve been training as regularly as my legs allow it, and so I was hoping to perform a little bit better this time. At the very least I wanted to be able to finish without slowing to a walk.

But, true to form, I of course failed spectacularly. Here’s how it happened:

First of all, my alarm clock failed to go off.

George

I’ll tell you what happened. I bet he got the AM/PM mixed-up.

Nope, it wasn’t the AM/PM since my alarm clock is my cell phone and it uses a 24h clock.

Jerry

My money’s on the snooze. I bet he hit the snooze for an extra 5 and it never came back on.

Nope, it wasn’t the snooze. I don’t think the snooze function ever gives up on my phone.

Jean-Paul

Man, it wasn’t the snooze. Most people think it was the snooze, but no, no snooze.

Jerry

AM/PM?

Jean-Paul

Man, it wasn’t the AM/PM. It was the volume.

Nope, the volume was set fine. The alarm is plenty loud even if the phone is in silent mode.

The problem was something that could really only happen on a device as complex and advanced as a Japanese cell phone: I figured I’d just get up at the same time I usually do for work, but I forgot that the “Work” alarm was set to only go off on weekdays.

So I woke up about 15 minutes before I had to meet the team, put on my running outfit, raced to Lawson to pick up some rice balls, and downed them as quickly as possible while walking to the meeting place.

Upon arriving I found that I had been moved from section 2, the flat part, to section 1, the hilly part. That also meant that I had about an hour less to digest.

The race started at 9:30 am in the bitter coastal winds. I was doing fine for about 10 minutes, then all of a sudden my stomach cramped up—the rice balls weren’t gone yet, and they were angry. I slowed to a walking pace, being passed by junior high and elementary school students, in front of the whole town which had for some reason turned out to watch.

Pathetically limping along, I was quite relieved to see the finish area—only to realize that it was the halfway finish area for the juvenile division (which runs the same full distance but divided among twice the runners). I got a good laugh from the crowd when I tried to pass my sash to my teammate who wasn’t there. The second half sucked about as much as the first.

Days later my stomach still feels weird, and I was really dogging it when I went running today. I suppose no matter how awesome the iPod + Nike exercise measurement system is, it doesn’t make you an athlete.

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