What Exactly Does It Feel Like to Run 100 Kilometres in One Day?

July 28, 2008 · Filed Under Articles, Runners

· Photo from wikipedia ·

An excellent story on the on-line version of The Guardian about a life-changing experience of an ultramarathon. The text is an extract from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a soon to be published book written by the Japanese author and marathon runner Haruki Murakami, where he tells his experience with his first and only ultra marathon through the notes he wrote right after the race, ten years ago. A race definitely left a trace in his life. The story starts like this:

June 23rd, 1996, Lake Saroma, Hokkaido, Japan. This 100km ultramarathon takes place every year at Lake Saroma, in June. The rest of Japan is in the rainy season then, but Hokkaido is too far north. Early summer in Hokkaido is a very pleasant time of year, though in its northernmost part, where Lake Saroma is, summer warmth is still a way off. In the early morning, when the race starts, it’s still freezing, and you have to wear heavy clothes. As the sun gets higher in the sky, you gradually warm up, and the runners, like bugs going through metamorphosis, shed one layer of clothes after another. By the end of the race, though I kept my gloves on, I’d stripped down to a tank top, which left me feeling chilly. If it rained, I’d really have frozen, but fortunately, despite the lingering cloud cover, we didn’t get a drop of rain.