The race

I was all excited about my first race in a long time. I had done all my training, booked the hotel and researched the train schedule so I knew how to get to the race. On the night before leaving I went into Osaka to get a haircut. I was talking to my stylist about the race and I told her it was near Nagoya. She said she was from Nagoya and asked exactly where it was. I told her it was near a ski resort. When she said there was no ski resort anywhere near Nagoya I started to worry. I went home and checked my directions and discovered there were two towns with the same name, unfortunately the one I was supposed to go to, was nowhere near Nagoya. I called Yoko who was staying in Kyoto for a yoga convention, she talked to the concierge in her hotel and he made hotel reservations for me at the real location of the race.
We left the next day for the race. It was quite a journey, starting on the shinkansen, transferring to a two car train, then to a one car train and finally to a taxi for a $40 dollar ride. We finally arrived at the hotel which was conveniently two minutes from the race starting line. It was a ski lodge with traditional Japanese style rooms and a hotspring style bath. It was rustic but quite a nice place. We spent a nice night and had a delicious nabe dinner with beer. Unfortunately I always forget that beer can give my migraine like headaches if I don't drink tons of water afterwards so I was up most of the night with a killer headache. Finally about 4 in the morning it went away and I was able to get a couple hours of sleep.
After such a horrible night I was surprised that I felt decent that morning but I did. When I went out to warm-up on the course I was surprised to see that it was 2.5k downhill and 2.5k uphill.The downhill was incredibly steep. It dropped 200 meters in the 2.5k. I am not the best downhill runner in the world so I knew it would be a tough race. When the gun went off I was ok for the first 100 meters but when the course really started to drop I just couldn't keep up. It felt like everybody was going by me. I just wasn't willing to throw myself down the hill. After about a mile of downhill runnning it flattened out a bit and I started to pass people. When we turned back toward home and uphill I caught a lot of people and made up for some of the 1st half. Overall I finished 3rd in the 40-49 division and about 13th overall. I got a nice medal for my efforts and a box of traditional Japanese food.
Overall it was not a very pleasing race, because it was hard to run a good time but I was glad to place because I have never placed before in a Japanese race. I have two more races coming up one on Oct 22nd and the other 3 weeks later. Hopefully I can run fast at both of them.