"Aaand... alright!"
"Hah... hah..." I slowed to a jog, hands on my hips, trying to stabilize my ragged breath.
"Great! Your stride is getting smoother, and at your peak, you're able to hit 67km/h more often," Chief said, his eyes glued to the trainer-issued tablet in his hands. He held it up for me to see; a graph showed the sharp, jagged spike of my top speed in the flying 400-meter sprint. "But we both know it's not enough! Let's aim for 68km/h next!"
"Yes, Sir!" I replied, turning and walking back towards the last corner to restart the drill.
With my flexibility improving day by day, my training regime had shifted. The initial, brutal phase of only forcing my body into new shapes was over. Now, the focus was on refinement. On sharpening my muscle memory and attuning my entire body to the unique rhythm of my Ideal Strides. It was like forging a sabre. The raw steel had been heated and hammered, now, it needed to be painstakingly formed. Though, to be honest, the "me" of right now was probably just a rectangular stick of glowing metal, still far from the true forging, the quenching, let alone the final sharpening.
This training was also a process of discovery, a way for me to find my own running form through constant trial and error. I understood the theoretical basics from the Chief, I had tip-offs from Oguri-san, and I had read countless articles on running mechanics. But my Ideal Stride wasn't something I could find in a textbook. It was an entirely new form, and simply mashing together the two styles it was based on, stride and pitch, wasn't going to work. It was a delicate, violent march, and I was still learning how to conduct it.
So here we were. A GPS tracker was strapped to my back, a heart rate monitor was snug against my chest, and every movement was being recorded and analyzed. The drill was simple in concept, but brutal in execution. I would jog from the start of the final corner, engage Gear One to accelerate through the turn, and once I hit my natural top speed, I would attempt to revv up to Gear Two and hold it down the 300-meter straight to the finish line. And so far, we had made some progress. That alone felt like a breakthrough for a project we had started from scratch.
In this training, every variable was under scrutiny. The length of my strides, the angle of my torso, the swing of my arms. From these runs, we had already identified key points to follow up on. The two most important were clear. First, I still needed to develop my core muscles. Even a slight, unintentional wobble in my upper body could disrupt the entire tempo that had been built up below, causing a catastrophic loss of momentum. Second, I could not simply copy Oguri-san's extreme forward lean. For her, it worked. For me, it actually reduced my turnover rate. It forced my center of gravity too low, leaving my legs without enough space to move forward at a higher frequency. We were still trying to find the sweet spot, the perfect degree of lean to cut through the wind without compromising my stride.
Alright. Time to go again. I thought as I reached the starting mark and raised my right hand high, signaling my readiness. Shortly after, the sharp sound of the Chief's whistle cut through the wind. I started with a slow jog for the first 20 meters, letting my body find its rhythm.
I lengthened my stride, digging into the gentle corner, my tempo increasing with each powerful step. Thud. Thud. Thud. I could hear the dirt below my feet getting crushed and compacted with each impact. The heavy cleats I had borrowed from Oguri-san, strapped to the soles of my shoes, swung like pendulums, adding resistance and forcing my legs to work harder.
The grip feels right. Start accumulating momentum.
Eighty meters had passed. I was exiting the corner now. My momentum was building, but Gear One hadn't peaked yet. Another 30 meters, maybe. That's when I would hit the ceiling, and it would be time to rev up.
True to my prediction, around that point, I felt the familiar plateau. My long strides couldn't go any faster. Now. I consciously shifted my focus, shortening the airtime between steps, increasing my turnover rate.
Revving up.
Second gear engaged. Now, the checklist. Loosen the shoulders. Keep the arms from flailing outwards. Torso lean... try 15 degrees?
Alright. Hold it stable.
200 meters to go. Arms, check. Upper body, check. Stride length, check. Now, increase the frequency. Reduce the ground contact time between strikes.
Thud-thud-thud-thud. The rhythm became a frantic, driving beat.
Keep going.. Like a metronome, but with the tempo constantly accelerating.
My Ideal Strides had to become a weapon. A weapon sharp enough to break through my top speed ceiling. A weapon powerful enough to make me confident in myself, enough to beat those with that inconceivable power.
Enough to win.
Enough to beat them.
"Goal in!" I heard the Chief's shout, and my body instinctively began to slow, the tension of the sprint giving way to the familiar burn of exertion.
I walked back to the Chief on the finish line, my chest heaving as I tried to stabilize my breath. "How was it, Chief?"
"Not bad," he said, holding up the tablet. The screen glowed with a new number. "67.1 km/h. And tucking your ears was a great idea. I didn't know you could do that."
He pointed at my head. "Did I? I didn't notice..." I touched my ears. They felt flattened back against my skull. I had just been focused on getting faster, on channeling every ounce of will into my legs. It must have been an unconscious, instinctual action to make myself more streamlined.
"Yeah, you did. Right around 300 meters mark. So, it's subconscious, huh?" he mused with a thoughtful look on his face. "Let's see if you can do it again. Once more, Ko-kun!"
"Yes, Sir," I replied, turning to walk back to the corner.
And so, we kept bashing our heads against the problem. We ran the drill again and again, adjusting, analyzing, pushing, until the sun had climbed higher, chasing the last of the dawn shadows from the track. I felt like I could train more, but the Chief decided to stop. As for Oguri-san, she didn't join our morning sessions these days. Too much intense training for an Umamusume who had passed her peak could lead to injury, or so the Chief had explained. Her work was about maintenance now, not constant, intense escalation like mine.
"Right, Ko-kun," the Chief said as I was packing up my gear. "Before you go. For the next big race, do you want to go with the Hopeful Stakes, or the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun?"
At that question, I paused wiping the sweat from my brow. "I can see the Hopeful Stakes, but why the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun?" It was a logical question. The Hopeful Stakes was the only G1 race at a medium distance in the Junior year. For me, aiming for it was common sense. But the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun? It was also a G1, but it was a mile race on dirt. My distance compatibility for a mile was not good.
"We're aiming for the Triple Crown route, right?" he began to explain as he tossed a bottle of hydration drink at me. "To enter the first crown, the Satsuki Sho, we have three primary ways. One is by having earned enough prize money to secure a spot. Second is by winning or placing high on the prep races. And lastly, through a lottery if there's a vacant spot, but let's not rely on this and treat that as our last resort."
I caught the bottle while letting 0his words sinking in.
"We don't know the exact plans of your big rivals," he continued, "but it's a safe bet that most of them will be aiming for the Hopeful Stakes. It's the logical choice for them, too. So, I'm providing you with these options. Choosing the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun means facing less of that top-tier competition, so we can secure the prize money we need along with a higher chance entering Satsuki-sho. Or, we can keep going with the Hopeful Stakes, face them head-on, and if bad luck happens, we can still fall back on the prep races, like Yayoi-sho or Wakaba Stakes later. What do you think?"
I unscrewed the cap as I thought about his reasoning. In fact, he was right. Just like for us, the Hopeful Stakes was the best target for the big six. It was a turf race at a distance that prepared them for the Classic Triple Crown. Especially the Satsuki Sho, both had the same distance and ran in the same racecourse.
But running away from that battle...
I felt conflicted. On one hand, securing a spot in the Satsuki Sho was the most logical, strategic objective. On the other hand... the thought of deliberately avoiding the strongest competition left a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn't regard dirt racers as lesser, but among the big six... maybe only one of them would run there. But again, even if I decided to face them, I was fully aware that it wasn't only me who was growing. Those six had never stopped improving either.
"Alright," the Chief's voice cut through my thoughts. "Before you go into your deep thoughts, you can think about it today. Let's hear your thoughts during afternoon training. And don't forget, we have pool training later." He gave me a knowing smile.
"Yes, Sir," I nodded. It was almost time for school and I had a lot to think about.
----
I don't feel like going to the canteen...
I leaned back in my chair, gazing emptily at the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. On it, a pyramid diagram illustrated the race classifications, from the Make Debut at the bottommost tier to the G1 races at the absolute peak. The previous class had been Theoretical Racing A, where we'd learned about the technical and administrative side of the Twinkle Series. I wondered why this subject wasn't taught until the second semester, but given that the first semester had been focused on the fundamentals of running and basic academics, I supposed it made sense.
I then turned towards the window and squinted at the reflection of the sun coming from the river in the south of the academy. The summer heat was still oppressive, even though we were already in September. It wasn't much different from the peak of the summer break, when we had been forced to relocate most of our training indoors. That was another reason we were only using the outdoor track in the cool, early morning for the time being.
As for why we hadn't gone to the seaside training resort that Tracen Academy was affiliated with, the reason was simple: budget. Our team, new and with only two members, still only received a small amount of funding from the Academy. It was a fraction of what the larger, more established teams were given. A two-month-long training camp was out of the question, and that was without even factoring in Oguri-san's appetite. We could have theoretically used our own personal money, but the Chief's wallet had already taken a massive hit from our small party. As for us Umamusume, we were only allowed to withdraw a small portion of our prize money as an allowance. The rest was locked away for our future and retirement. That was Tracen's rule. Middle and high schoolers couldn't be trusted to handle millions of yen on their own. I had to agree with that sentiment.
And so, we decided to stay at the academy and train here. A change of atmosphere by training on the beach would have been nice, I suppose, but for me, who had only arrived here less than six months ago, I didn't feel a pressing need for it. The novelty of Tracen itself hadn't worn off yet. Oguri-san was also fine with this. She had gone to the seaside camp every year with her previous team under Trainer Musaka, so staying at the academy this year was, for her, its own kind of change of pace.
Anyway, I also had tried to nudge Oguri-san a bit about the Taboo, about what I had felt during her race, but her defense was unyielding. She simply repeated what Creek-san had told me that day. Well, to be fair, it was just a passing curiosity for me. What I truly had to focus on was reaching Gear Three and refining my Ideal Strides. As Creek-san had said, this was the more reliable path.
Without me even noticing, I was already staring back at the whiteboard, with arms folded across my chest. I lost deeply in these thoughts when my entire field of vision was suddenly covered by a blurry yellow. I blinked, trying to focus, and the image resolved into a face. Someone was leaning over my desk, staring at me with a curious smile. If I recalled correctly, she was Mini Orchid-san, my desk neighbor to the right.
After a moment, seeing that I had returned from my daydream, she asked, "You're not going to the canteen?"
"Negativ-," I replied. "Um, I mean.. I don't feel like it."
"Wha!? What happened?" Her eyes widened with concern. "For someone like you to not go for lunch... is something bothering you? Or maybe... a diet?"
"Someone like me?" I asked, the phrasing sounding a bit rude.
"Ah, sorry! I didn't mean anything bad," she said quickly. "It's just, you know... you're quite famous as one of the big eaters in our grade.. and for you to skip lunch..."
Wait. Me? A big eater? What was this rumor? If you were talking about big eaters, it should have been Oguri-san, right? Why had my name suddenly come up?
"Isn't eating a lot common for us?" I countered. "And compared to Oguri-san, I don't eat mu—" I stopped, the words catching in my throat as a sudden, horrifying realization dawned on me.
"You really shouldn't compare yourself with Oguri Cap-san..." Orchid-san said, her smile turning even more awkward.
Ah, right. I often ate my meals around Oguri-san. My own nutritional intake also had been steadily increasing for months. Had I not noticed the sheer volume of my portions because I was always subconsciously using Oguri-san as the standard?
"Aff- uh, you're right," I conceded, a slow sense of dread creeping in as I glanced down at my stomach. "I guess I indeed eat a lot." A big eater, huh? Apologies, Oguri-san. Was this my karma for silently judging your appetite since that first day? This title was not elegant at all.
"But hey, it's not a bad thing, you know!" she said, waving her hands frantically as if trying to console me. "You see... um... ah! You grew taller, yes! You must be able to grow taller because you eat a lot, right?"
Well, she was right about that. I had grown twelve centimeters since my Prime began. That wasn't bad, I supposed.
"Also, um... you see," she continued, her words tumbling out in a rush, "back during the entrance ceremony, I saw you, and you were so lean. I thought you had a stayer's build. But now you've grown larger... looking at your muscles now, if I didn't sit beside you every day, I would have thought the person from the entrance ceremony wasn't you."
Her words hit home.. hard. My muscles had kept growing at an alarming rate during my intensive training. The casual clothes I had brought from home didn't even fit anymore. The only things that still did were an old, oversized parka and a pair of tactical cargo pants I'd bought from a military surplus store. My entire casual wardrobe was limited to those two items. Hell, I was already thinking of asking the academy's supplies department for a new, larger set of tracksuits.
"Are my muscles really that conspicuous?" I couldn't help but ask. If that was true, then for the sake of protecting what femininity I still had left, looser and more covering clothes would have to be the direction I took going forward.
"Un!" she confirmed with a vigorous nod. "Is this the result of your Spartan training!? You and your trainer are crazy! I heard about your training from other girls, and I can't help but shiver. Weighted sprints while carrying a huge backpack, dragging the Academy's legendary gigantic tire, and continuous sprints up and down the steepest slope in the academy for an entire afternoon... I also heard you don't even take a break between those sessions! Just thinking about doing it every day makes me want to throw up. I hope my future trainer will be more lenient..." I could see her visibly shiver at the thought.
"I guess you could say that," I answered, deciding not to correct the more exaggerated parts of the rumor. "But not taking a break is an exaggeration."
Well honestly, it had been tough at the beginning. Although recently, my body had learned to tolerate it. The ability of an Umamusume to adapt was, indeed, crazily great.
"You said you'd heard about it. From where?" I asked her.
"Copenhagen-san, at least everyone in our class knows about it," she replied, her smile wry.
Did they? So the saying that nothing truly escaped the gossip of teenage girls was true. Granted, I rarely spoke to anyone in the class, except for King Halo, who would sometimes come to my desk and ask something trivial. But why had I never even heard a whisper about it until now? Their network of intelligence was surprisingly tight-lipped.
"We often want to ask you directly," she explained, her voice growing a bit weak, "but you always seem to be lost in your own world. It's... difficult for us to approach you."
"Well, you can just ask. I won't mind," I said.
"We've tried," she replied, "but we couldn't wake you up."
An awkward smile touched my own lips. "Apologies. That's on me. I'll try to.. limit it from now on."
"That's nice to hear, Copenhagen-san!" she said, her expression brightening into a pure, genuine smile. "As the class rep, I'll also do my best to help you! You can ask me anything!"
Oh, right. She was my class representative. I truly apologized for being such a bother to you, Mini Orchid-san.
"No, no, it should be me who thanks you, Mini Orchid-san," I said.
"Just Mini is enough!"
"Alright, Mini-iinchou," I conceded. "I'm used to being called Ko-chan back home, so Ko is fine."
"How about... Kopu-chan?" she proposed, her eyes sparkling with inspiration.
"That sounds like 'police' in English..."
"Hehe, but it sounds cute!" she pressed on.
"Fine..." I yielded. Her bright, earnest aura made it difficult to refuse. Plus, a new nickname was rather fresh for my ears.
"Yay! You're not as weird as I thought!" she cheered. "A bit curt, maybe at first, but you're easy to talk to, Kopu-chan!"
"You really do speak what's on your mind, don't you?" I said, my smile turning wry again.
"Ah! Sorry!" she slumped, her shoulders drooping.
"It's fine. I don't mind," I said. This class rep was so pure.. no wonder everyone had chosen her, including me.
"Un!" she said, bouncing back instantly. "By the way, I watched your debut race, Kopu-chan! Not only when training, but your running is also crazy, you know!? Isn't running like that risky? I read the comments on the video, and everyone was saying running like that is bad for your legs."
"Well, you're right, but I'll be fine. Don't worry," I assured her.
"You'd better be! And how about your next race?" she asked, the curiosity emanated from her was through the roof.
"Well, we haven't decided yet," I answered truthfully.
"Hmmm, but it should be a G1, right!? You looked so strong in your debut race! I believe you can enter it, no problem!" she said with a confidence that felt both surprising and encouraging.
"Affirmative, but we're still thinking about the Hopeful Stakes or the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun—"
It was when a cool and familiar voice cut my words short. "Still not sure? I thought we would finally have our first official race against each other. What a letdown."
Of course. It was her.
"Oh, King-chan! You're back early!" Mini-iinchou said, turning to greet King Halo.
"Yes. And I was pleasantly surprised to see Copenhagen finally talking to you," she said, her gaze shifting to me. "But what's about these two races?"
"My trainer asked for my thoughts on these races," I said, shrugging off her question. "And it seems.. you've already set your sights on the Hopeful Stakes."
"Of course," she declared, striking a casual but regal pose. "And this King will win it." Her confidence was as blinding as ever.
"As expected of King-chan! If only I could borrow a bit of your confidence," Mini-iinchou applauded.
"I don't know you can run on dirt too, but well, I guess it should be easy for you to take on the Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun," King said, a dismissive wave in her voice.
"Negative. It won't be that 'easy'," I countered immediately. "El Condor Pasa might run there. She won her debut race on a dirt mile, and she finished with a strong time."
"Right. She is strong," King conceded. She then turned her full attention to me, a challenging glint in her crimson eyes. "Well, I just hope you choose the Hopeful Stakes in the end. It would be boring otherwise."
Boring, huh?
Yeah, honestly, she was right. The thought of taking the "safer" path, of deliberately avoiding the strongest field, suddenly felt... hollow when she pointed that out. It was unacceptable. I couldn't beat them if I didn't run with them, after all.
"Sure. Why not?" I shrugged, the words coming out before I could think. But it wasn't a rash decision. In my heart, I knew the choice had been made from the beginning. Her words were just the final nudge. Running away from the main battlefield was not an option.. fine, maybe it was just an excuse, maybe it was a rash decision, but hey, choosing this path felt right for me.
"That quick?" she sighed, a hint of amusement in her voice. "You sure are easy to provoke."
"Negative," I said, keeping my voice as steady as possible. "I already knew what I wanted. I was just considering the most logical option."
"Sure," she smirked. "Let's go with that."
"Sure, whatever," I shrugged.
"You two really get along well," Mini-iinchou said, her bright, innocent smile making the atmosphere in our little corner of the classroom feel strangely warm.
---