PokeEarn Interview Ryo Doi | PokeEarn Official Site | PokeEarn

Doi is now hailed as a king of mountain racing, but he did not start running in the mountains until he was in his thirties.

"I started road running at 30, and when I was wondering what to do in summer, when there are no road events, a senior colleague at work told me that trail running in the mountains has events in summer too."

He was 31 at the time. He had started trail running as training for road running, yet at the very first event he entered he won unexpectedly. What was it about this sport that suited Doi?

"I'm not sure, really. But I do remember that, unlike road races, it was fun watching the mountain scenery change one moment to the next."

Doi, who had originally enjoyed mountaineering as a hobby too, became absorbed in trail running, feeling that it let him "go deeper into the mountains, faster, with lighter gear."

"At the time I was playing basketball as a company-team athlete, and I sensed that further growth was going to be difficult. Trail running, on the other hand, rewarded you with better times the more you ran. You could say it isn't overly competitive, and I was also drawn to the way everyone shares in enjoyment beyond just rankings and records."

Doi went on to post strong results in 100-mile races at home and abroad, drawing growing attention on the mountain racing scene. What cemented his reputation was the 2022 TJAR. In this race, said to be the toughest in Japan, competitors cross three ranges of the Japan Alps from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean, and he won while cutting more than six hours off the record. How was such a feat possible?

"I think a big factor was that I set aside the conventional wisdom of TJAR up to that point and took on the race with my own thinking. TJAR is a race that blends mountaineering, trail running, and road running, but I approached it in a more trail-running-oriented way."

TJAR has long been considered a race where mountaineering strength is key, but Doi combined mountaineering technique with the speed he had cultivated in trail running, crossing the Northern Alps on day one and the Central Alps on day two, stunning the officials and fans following his progress via GPS tracking.

"No one had attempted crossing the Central Alps in two days, so I decided to overturn that conventional wisdom."

Doi, who tore through the first half of the race at high speed, looked back and said, "The Southern Alps were tough," yet he finished with a new record of 4 days, 17 hours, and 33 minutes.

In the following 2024 event, Doi splendidly claimed a second straight win, but the way the race unfolded was different from the previous dominant victory. He developed blisters on his feet and reportedly even considered dropping out. There was a reason he mustered the willpower to run all the way to the finish.

"I went into 2024 intending to produce a result and bring my TJAR chapter to a close. If I had dropped out there, I felt I would have no way to properly bring things to an end."

Doi is also known for his meticulous preparation based on past experience, and for his thorough pursuit of efficiency and rationalization. He is famous for carrying only the ink cartridge of his mandatory ballpoint pen to save even a tiny bit of weight.

"I run the road sections during the cool of the night. On high peaks where oxygen is thin, I work out where and by when I need to pass through, drawing on the feel from past events and my time trials, and I judge what is necessary and what is not, building the whole thing up rationally as I take on the race. This isn't because I'm being stoic, it's because I've decided that doing it this way is the most rational."

Doi excels in big races at home and abroad, such as France's UTMB (Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc), Italy's Tor des Geants, Spain's Transgrancanaria, and Japan's Mt.FUJI100. What are his criteria for choosing which races to enter?

"I love traveling. I used to be a backpacker. For the events I enter, I choose places that are hard to get to, places where I might encounter a new world. Simply put, I take on races where I feel I want to run through that scenery."

Doi has a strong TJAR image, but he considers his main discipline to be 100-mile races rather than the multi-day ultra-trail races.

"One hundred miles (about 160km) is a miraculous distance. Any shorter and it becomes too much of a pure competition, any longer and you lose the sense of speed. It strikes just the right balance between a journey and a race. It was 100-mile racing that got me seriously hooked on trail running, and because I want to create those kinds of encounters for others, I hold a 100-mile event called BAMBI100 with my friends."