TRANS JAPAN ALPS RACE
Finishing the 256-mile Trans Japan Alps Race is an incredible feat of endurance, but the years-long qualification process to earn a place on the start line is merciless. RW looks inside what may be the world’s most exclusive ultra club
‘My life is getting shorter,’ says Naomasa Kimura over a fried pork cutlet rice bowl drizzled in a sweet and savoury sauce. ‘It’s too much. I promised my wife this is the last time I try... It’s a touchy subject.’ The 41-year-old inventory manager at a tractor company in Osaka is sitting at a cramped restaurant table with five other men eating the same dish in the lush, wooded town of Komagane that sits in the valley splitting Japan’s Southern and Central Alps.
It’s a cool, damp June evening and cheery garden gnomes are perched on a windowsill politely observing the conversation. Most of the men are rail-thin with muscular legs, and several are wearing T-shirts from 100-mile races. They’ve each run a sub-3:20 marathon in the past year (most sub-3:00), a feat that satisfies one of the many prerequisites to even be invited to tomorrow’s Athlete Selection Event, a two-day qualifier for the biennial Trans Japan Alps Race (TJAR) in August. The encyclopaedic rabbit hole of entry requirements and necessary physical achievements is so demanding and convoluted that qualifying for one of the 30 spots in the actual race might be more impressive, and dangerous, than finishing it.
Roughly 70 applicants submitted documentation of their attempts to meet the requirements, which, among many other things, included camping at least 10 nights above 2,000m and completing a race with a time cut-off of 25 hours or more in less than 60% of that time. With 60 available spots, 59 runners gained entry to the two-day trial.
Those who ultimately qualify for the TJAR get to race 256 miles south from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean, crossing three prefectures and three mountain ranges with 27,000m of elevation gain and descent. That’s the equivalent of running up and down 3,775m Mt Fuji from sea level seven times within eight consecutive days, entirely self-supported, and in August – the muggiest time of year at the peak of Japan’s typhoon season. Just to cross the finish line is considered such a badge of honour that no racers, even first-place winners, receive prize money or trophies. The reward is gaining entry into the exclusive clique of finishers.
‘This training is taking a toll on me physically,’ says Kimura as the others crammed in around him shake their heads and chuckle. One of them, Yusuke Hayashida from Tokyo, pulls up Kimura’s Strava profile on his phone and passes it around. Everyone’s eyeballs bulge and they all let out different tones of ‘Ooooo!’. Since March, he’s done a 100km training run every weekend, sometimes squeezing i
