Human Salted Seaweed Marathon
Race report 19: How has no one died doing this?
30th Human Salted Seaweed Marathon (第３０回人間塩だし昆布マラソン)
I like events with a bit of local charm about them. A 10K is a 10K, and a marathon is a marathon no matter where you run it, but sometimes events come up that put a bit of a spin on things.
A while ago some of my friends told me about this event, which is read “ningen shiō dashi konbu marason.” To break that down, thats 人間 (ningen: human), 塩 (shiō: salt), だし (dashi : to be expelled), 昆布 (konbu: a type of seaweed), and マラソン (marason: literally marathon but is often used in Japan to mean running event). I tried to translate the name as best as I could but the nuance is more like a running event for preparing seaweed using salt expelled from humans. It’s a revolting name, but it’s also pretty hilarious.
The event itself is a 10 km run held on the last weekend of July, which is usually one of the hottest weekends of the year. The objective of the run is not to run quickly but to lose weight through sweating. You are weighed before the run starts, and immediately after crossing the finish line. The person who loses the most weight wins. (You get about an hour an a half to do the run so you can run further than 10 km if you see fit).
This event seemed like a bit of a laugh so I decided to enter. The event was the 30th iteration of the event so clearly nobody had died yet, so why the hell not.
Event day (July 27th) - “Warm up”
Saturday’s are a parkrun day. I didn’t want to miss my parkrun event so I decided to enter the parkrun before the event and just run at a steady pace. I bought two bottles of sports drink (4 liters in total) on the way and was sipping at them before the parkrun to try increase my body weight little by little.
The parkrun went smoothly, my parkrun friends wished me luck (stating that I am crazy and that they hope I don’t die of heat stroke), and I then went stright to the event from there.
Pre-race
I arrived pretty early at the event and found that the flow of what needed to be done was:
Registration
Baggage drop
Body paint (drawing your race number on you somewhere)
Weigh in
I ended up registering then drinking the remainder of the sports drink I brought with me before dropping off my stuff, getting marked with a race number and then weighing in.
After weighing in there was an open ceremony (with a dance) then we needed to line up before setting off in waves.
The run
Right before I set off I ended up talking to some friends who I ended up doing the entire run with. When we set off it was a little sheltered by trees but less than 1 km into the run we were just being cooked by the sun. No shade anywhere. Just sand, and heat
The temperature climbed to about 33°C (91.4 F) and there was very little wind in the first half of the run.
We ran down the beach until we came to the 5K turnaround point (there was a 5 km run and a 10 km run). The rules of the race meant that you were supposed to stop at the water stations and take a drink, so we stopped there for a very brief break.
It felt like it was getting hotter and hotter as we ran along. I think we were all literally sweating buckets at this point (which was the main point of the race). We hit the turnaround point at 5 km, took a drink then turned back.
Right before we got back to the finish line we noticed that our watches were showing that we had only run about 9 and a half kilometers. We still had time left to we ran back, crossed the 10 km mark then crossed the finish line with plenty of time to spare. I had had enough for the day and decided that survival was more important than ultimate victory.
After the race
I crossed the finish line, then immediately got weighed. It turns out I’d lost 3.5 kg in just about an hour. Of course, all of this was water weight (and likely from the 4 liters of sports drink I downed before the event).
One of the guys I ran with lost over 5 kg, and based on information I received from a friend of mine who was around until late and found the final results, the actual winner lost over 10 kg!
I received a finisher certificate for the event along with a sweat towel and some “human salted seaweed.” I’m pretty sure it’s not actually salted with human salt, but it’s quite an amusing keepsake regardless.
Final thoughts
I enjoyed this event. I’m not sure if I’ll run it again, but I am glad that I was able to take part in an event with a bit of local flavor (even if that flavor was very salty).
More silly runs please.
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Osu!
Anthony
If they want human salt they can just go to your X comments.
You got the market cornered.