The Northern Horse Park Marathon Event

The title says it all really. Another month another marathon event that doesn't actually involve running a marathon. In my case it was half a marathon while for Sanae and Cian it was, ahem, 2.5 kilometres. But they were a long 2.5 kilometres.
The marathon-that-wasn't was held in a large stud farm just a short gallop down the road from Chitose airport. Unlike the Date half marathon the numbers participating tend to be considerable smaller (in the hundreds rather than the thousands) and the food you are supplied with after the race is exceedingly tasty (even if Sanae did end up in hospital on the Monday, but more of that later).
Tired of Daddy stealing all the athletic glory, Mammy and the young fella decided to "go for gold!" and enter the two and a half thousand metre sprint, sorry, marathon race. This in turn gave rise to bouts (three) of intense training over the past month when some of the runs stretched to almost 20 minutes.
Yes, 20 minutes. The Clare hurlers wouldn't push themselves as hard.
So Sunday rolled around and we rolled out of bed at the ungodly hour of 6:00am to get to the race. Then again this is Japan and they do ungodly quite well.
Cian and Sanae were off at 9:00am while Daddy didn't unleash his hairy legged magnificence until eleven o'clock.
Cian and Sanae were finished by 9:17am. Which meant (a) they had obviously imbibed some of the same stuff that the trainer Al Zarooni was wetting the horses oats with back home; and (b) Daddy had to sit and twiddle his thumbs for an hour a half. Which I duly did albeit in my car as it was fecking freezing out. There was an unholy wind blowing, listen to me, a full gale howling across the Park, picking up some of the recently foaled foals (?) and hurling them into the tree tops. Where the crows pecked them to death while the thunder rumbled.
Gothic were the conditions.
Eleven finally rolls around and we are off. Or everyone else is. Daddy has taken shelter from the wind in a stable and whilst burnishing my horse whispering technique ("Listen Neddy, stay away from Tesco, you hear me. Stay away from Tesco, particularly the meat section"), miss the sound of the starters pistol. So I am the last across the starting line.
That wind, though. Blowing mean and hard. For the first 5km though it's at our backs so some of the smaller, lighter Japanese runners find themselves being whooshed down the road. However, we then u-turn around and run smack into it for the next 11 kilometres. Around the 8km mark I begin to think I am hallucinating. Up ahead of me there is a runner wearing a green and gold top which looks remarkably like the Kerry jersey.
I get a bit closer.
It is a Kerry jersey!
WTgoodF?!
I hammer away for a couple of minutes and finally catch up with this far flung exile from the Kingdom. Turns out to be Mick from Ballybunnion who I played football with last summer and works on the Irish owned stud farm down Hidaka way. I had met him earlier this year at the Ambassador's reception but I don't think either of us expected to cross paths close on 9km into a half marathon on a windy as feck Sunday in Chitose. We chat for a few minutes, or rather splutter out a few gasped words in between our panting before I put the afterburners on I disappear off into the distance. Damned if I am going to shame my Causeway ancestors by finishing behind a Ballybunnion man.
The wind continues to blow.
After an hour and fifty four minutes I finally cross the finish line, exactly 27 seconds slower than my time in the Date half marathon. This is uncanny. Spooky even. Last year my time difference between the two events was 23 seconds. Henceforth I will now be known as the Metronome Man.
The post race feed is as good as I remembered with steak fillets, curry rice, ham steaks, steaming bowls of ramen and a very nice man with a barrel on his back dispensing free beer to all and sundry. Cian and me want to take the nice man home but Mammy says no.
Unfortunately, for Sanae the post race meal proved too rich for her gall bladder free body and she spent Sunday night in a prolonged intimate embrace with the toilet before spending a rather anxious Monday down at the local hospital wondering if her pancreatitis had flared up again. (She reckons the steak fillets were sourced from Tesco).
Cian on the other hand was splendidly impressed with his own athletic prowess. Immediately after the race he reckoned had passed "at least 10" other runners. By Sunday evening that had increased to 20 and by Monday morning he estimated he had easily sped by 50 people. Next up for Cian Gebrselassie Takahashi Gaynor is the Forest Kozan Green Race in September though he plans to get in some high altitude training around Athgoe hill this summer.