My feet...

Well, I'm writing this while recovering from several injuries. Injuries sustained by fault of refugees. My feet are blistered, my legs are kind of sore and I'm tired. Ok, I may have exaggerated slightly there but after running an 8km race in an insanely unfit state, I was left in a fair amount of pain/tiredness. I was asked to take part in an 8km run for charity, by Junten, and I was well up for it to be honest, despite the fact that the last time I'd properly ran was back in year 10 or 11, running around backhouse park for an hour in the winter Games lessons in school (against my will).

We were told well in advance so I should've properly trained but these things can't be helped and laziness got the better of me. I didn't really see the need to train, if I'm honest, especially since we were racing against the first and second year juniors (11-13 year olds). I figured it would be fairly easy to beat them but oh how wrong I was. I didn't take into account that just about every single one of them are in a sports club of some kind, like football, baseball, tennis, running, etc. It turns out a fair amount of them are atleast ten times fitter than me.

Anyway, a bit of an explanation: the race was to raise money for Refugees International Japan, a charity dedicated to helping refugees around the world. All of the junior students who took part raised sponsor cash, and me, Barney and Erling were required to do the same, so we sponged the teachers in Junten for all they had. Apparently, collectively, the juniors raised twice as much as the entire school did last year, so this was a fair success (and I think I heard that the numbers reached nearly £1000, although I'd have to check on that cause I'm not entirely sure), and coupled with our sponsorships and the money raised by every class in the school, a huge amount will have been raised.

I still thought it was fairly harsh to force the juniors to run 8k (although the girls only had to run 5k), especially since some of them (very few) are fairly unfit. And apparently one of my students agreed with me. A certain unnamed second year student of mine, who is notorious for his fear of English (and social situations in general), refused to get out of bed. I assumed he'd just walk the course but he went one further and decided it would be easier to disobey his mother than the teachers. Either way, as harsh as it is, the majority of people finished the race (and the ones who didn't reach the end will do it again next week. Junten really knows how to forcefully raise money for charity, eh?).

And onto the race: after tanking up on caffeine - my trump card (two red bulls and the last two pro plus tablets I had left from England), a few speeches and some warmup laps of a small field, we were ready to go! I decided to try to keep up with Nakahara sensei (a marathon runner) for a while because I figured I'd best make use of what little stamina I had fast and then rely on my fighting spirit for the rest of the race... this didn't work, infact I should've realised it wouldn't work because just typing it makes me feel like an idiot. Nakahara sensei was taking no prisoners and went far too fast so I was dead after the first km. I think I managed to keep up with him until the second km until he left me in the dust.

Anyway, I fought on, stitch in chest, blisters on feet and insane heat (for some reason in the middle of this winter period it hit around 25degrees - it felt like summer - and since I was wearing a jacket I nearly died). I still remember thinking, from about 2km onwards, that I really wished I had done some kind of training, but it was a little late for that. Anyway, I finished not too far behind Barney and Erling, who had both done weeks of running in prep, and came in at a respectable 47 minutes, which Barney said was his and Matt's time two years ago. So for the English department the results were: Barney: 40 minutes, Erling: 44 minutes, Me: 47 minutes. Not too bad, I thought, especially with little or no preperation.

After the race, we had to stand and listen to more speeches, awards given out to the fastest students, all while I could barely stand due to 4 massive blisters, but we were allowed to leave, finally, and on the evening Nakahara sensei invited us around to his house for a massive meal. It was a big lamb dinner and I tell you now it'll be the first and last time I eat such a big roast dinner in Japan. And since both of Nakahara's daughters speak Queens English in a perfect southern accent, I might aswell have been in England for the evening.