Just below midway by way of “into the Excessive Mountain,” a brief movie about Japanese ultrarunner Kimino Miyazaki’s run on the 2023 Hardrock 100, the digicam sees her doubled over in ache, dry heaving at midnight.
Miyazaki and her pacer, Anthony Lee, have simply left the Governor’s Basin help station 66 miles in, and on the following climb, she is hit with altitude illness: intense fatigue, shortness of breath, foggy head. She sits, face in palms, on the facet of the path.
“I felt worry like by no means earlier than, greater than the struggling, hardship, or ache,” Miyazaki’s post-race ideas learn throughout the display, lit solely by her headlamp. “I noticed I wasn’t my typical self, having altitude fatigue for the primary time. I curled myself right into a ball and looked for the supply of my worry.”
“You’re okay,” Lee tells her. “Positivity. Smile. You’re right here at Hardrock. Not meant to be simple. Wild and difficult. Are you wild and difficult, Kimino?”
“Sure,” she lets out.
“Okay, present me.”
“Okay.” And Miyazaki will get up, takes just a few steps along with her trekking poles, and continues the race, which she in the end finishes.
“into the Excessive Mountain” follows Kimino Miyazaki across the 2023 Hardrock 100 course. All photographs are screenshots from the movie.
This stage of element makes the movie, directed by Japanese filmmaker Ranyo Tanaka, what it’s: an sincere, complete, and in the end stunning take a look at Hardrock 100 by way of the lens of Miyazaki’s expertise on the race. In case you didn’t already need to run Hardrock, you’ll after watching.
The movie, which options interviews with an enormous array of individuals, from 26-time Hardrock finishers to assist station volunteers to train physiologists, is fantastically shot and edited. Along with capturing the individuals, it’s not quick on panoramic photographs of the majestic San Juan Mountains and their considerable wildlife. What units this movie aside is its entry and give attention to particulars. The viewer is handled to Miyazaki’s highs, lows, and every part in between.
The movie opens with an introduction to Hardrock — its energy, its magnificence, its neighborhood — earlier than transitioning to a take a look at Miyazaki’s altitude coaching in preparation for the race, full with interviews with train physiologist Masayoshi Yamamoto and high-altitude mountaineer Hiroyuki Kuraoka, who clarify, quite presciently, the stress working at altitude places in your cardiovascular system.
The primary half of the race follows Miyazaki by way of the grey morning, throughout streams, into and out of sunny valleys. The photographs are impressively detailed.
After Miyazaki reaches the Ouray help station 58.6 miles in, the place she picks up Lee as a pacer, she begins to indicate her fatigue.
“It’s gonna’ be an excellent night time,” Lee says. “And good morning.”
However first got here the altitude illness.
The movie options commentary from high-altitude consultants whereas Kimino Miyazaki struggles with the elevation.
“It’s merely harmful due to the excessive altitude and low oxygen within the air,” Kuraoka explains between photographs of Miyazaki struggling, hunched over at occasions, sitting on the facet of the path.
However as soon as Lee, who serves not solely as Miyazaki’s pacer but additionally because the movie’s narrator at occasions, helps Miyazaki get shifting once more, the pair hike by way of the snow to reach at Kroger’s Canteen, 70 miles in.
Kimino Miyazaki along with her pacer Anthony Lee on the second morning.
As morning comes, Miyazaki runs, hikes, and wades the remainder of the 30 miles earlier than coming into the long-lasting end. Below a transparent blue sky and buoyed by cheers throughout her, she lifts a trekking pole triumphantly earlier than leaning right down to kiss, and later hug, the rock.
“As I kissed the monument, I forgot how powerful the course was and the way excessive up I had suffered like magic,” learn her translated ideas.
Her remaining line underlines the movie’s magnificence and honesty: “What I took dwelling was the gratitude to the Hardrock neighborhood,” she says, “and a bit little bit of muscle ache.”
It didn’t take lengthy for Kimino Miyazaki to overlook the hardships of the earlier 100 miles.
Name for Feedback
- Have you ever had an opportunity to observe “into the Excessive Mountain” but? What did you suppose?
- How excited are you to observe this 12 months’s class of Hardrock 100 runners make their manner by way of the San Juans?
