Shitara on the Olympic Marathon Trials: "I Want to Crush It"

Last year Yuta Shitara became the first Japanese man in 16 years to break the national record in the marathon. But just seven months later that record was rewritten. Now, vowing to run "my way," he faces September's Tokyo Olympics marathon trials, the MGC Race.

At last year's Tokyo Marathon when Shitara broke the national record he picked up a 100 million yen bonus and established himself as the leading contender for the Tokyo Olympic team. Nothing about Shitara fit the usual stereotypes. He didn't run longer than 30 km in training. He prioritized his own sense of his condition and refused to run any more than necessary.

But in October his record fell to one of the biggest rivals of his generation, Suguru Osako. Two months later at the Fukuoka International Marathon Shitara fell off pace after 32 km, the lingering effects of a stress fracture in his right leg. When his recovery didn't go as planned he began to lose motivation.

"I started losing sight of where I should focus my efforts," he said. "When I'd been running I'd been thinking in terms of 2:04 or 2:05, but then once I couldn't run it was just this kind of nasty feeling." Unable to run the way he wanted, at the low point of the struggle against himself Shitara decided to make one key change.

Up to then Shitara had been steadfast in saying he wouldn't do training runs longer than 30 km on the roads. Now, when his training partners stopped at 30 km, he would pick up the pace and keep going until 35 km. In pursuit of the win, the hard extra 5 km was his new key. "After 30 km in my marathons up to then I'd always slowed down," he said. "This time around I made the conscious decision to focus on speeding up at 30 km."

The new approach paid off. In the spring season he ran the second-fastest 5000 m of his career, the fastest 10000 m time so far this year by a Japanese man, and a fast half marathon. Earlier this month he scored his first marathon win at Australia's Gold Coast Marathon, taking it with a fast finish. Seemingly all at once, he was back in form.

The MGC Race Olympic trials go down Sept. 15. Asked to sum up how he plans to approach the trials Shitara definitively threw it down, saying, "My way. I am 100% not thinking in terms of, 'I want to run with this guy,' or 'I need to focus on this guy.' The one who's running it is me. I want to go out there and crush it. If this were the Olympics or World Championships or something I know you'd have to be a little strategic, but it's just a race against a bunch of Japanese guys. Doing it conservatively would be pretty boring."

At the MGC Race Shitara will come face-to-face with Osako for the first time in a marathon. "I know there'll be a lot of attention on us," Shitara said. "He's the opponent who broke my national record, so I'll be going there to beat him."

source article:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190722/k10011999401000.html
translated by Brett Larner

photo © 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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