Courtesy of Sakiko Minagawa
Running is not an individual sport, according to Sakiko Minagawa: it takes teamwork. That includes working with your competitor, which she found herself doing for several miles on her way to a first-place female finish at the 2021 Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus Marathon.
“The way I am is you can’t do it alone, running is teamwork,” Minagawa says. “Yes, we’re not teammates, but it’s teamwork. Twenty-six-point-two miles is way too long to do it yourself, and so we were both very encouraging.”
Minagawa is a Westerville resident and a registered dietitian for the division of sports medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Ohio State University, where she earned six varsity letters as a member of the Buckeye cross country and track and field teams.
Competing for the Buckeyes from 2012-16, Minagawa assisted the women’s team in earning 26th place at the NCAA cross country championships. She still has the third fastest 10K time in school history.
In 2018, her first marathon time qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials Marathon, and she raced in the 2020 trials in Atlanta for her second marathon.
In the Columbus Marathon, her third, she finished first out of 667 women with a personal record of 2:41:12.
Yet what she really wants people to know about her is that she was a walk-on at OSU, a team player more than a standout.
Courtesy of Sakiko Minagawa
“I was an OK runner, OK enough to walk on, but I wasn’t like a state winner and all that,” says Minagawa, a graduate of Dublin Scioto High School. “Something that I really emphasized to my younger teammates that came on the team and to runners that I talk to now, I say that, ‘Hey, you can make a difference without being the fastest runner.’”
Minagawa points out that even with a victory, she knows there are faster runners elsewhere in the U.S. and even faster throughout the world. Still, she says, it doesn’t take the best athlete to make a positive contribution.
Minagawa says she was proud to represent Columbus Running Company’s elite team and to run in a race sponsored by her employer. All those hometown connections made running in Columbus extra special.
Going the Distance
During the race, Minagawa knew it was time to pull definitively ahead when she saw Emma McCarron, the runner who would ultimately take second place, start to fall behind around mile 16. Minagawa’s coach, Columbus Running Company co-owner Jim Jurcevich, had prepped her for the moment.
“It wasn’t great timing because it was the biggest incline of the marathon,” she says. “I remember my coach saying, ‘Get after it.’ He actually was right there when the surge happened and it was really comforting to see him.”
After that, Minagawa didn’t look back. Even when Jurcevich told her to relax and enjoy herself for the final two miles, she took it all in, but she didn’t let up.
“Anything can happen in the marathon,” she says. “I’m not going to slow down yet. … I will enjoy it, but I’m not relaxing yet.”
The first half, Minagawa was conservative, pacing herself with the help of her identical twin sister, Minori, who signed up to run the half marathon, which followed the same path as the first 13 miles of the full marathon. Minori helped to monitor their pace and assure her twin that any female runners passing them were racing the half and not the full marathon.
She considers her sister her favorite training partner to this day, even when they don’t get to run together nearly as much as they did as high school and college teammates.
“While I was running straight towards the finish line,” Minagawa says, “I could see my twin sister on the other side and it was just amazing being able to cross that finish line and you have that moment of still going and then falling into my sister’s arms and hugging her and just being like, ‘Yay, we did it.’”
Minagawa says she enjoys running for the joy as well as the competition. Another passion, and an area of professional expertise, is nutrition. With Nationwide, she works primarily with middle and high school athletes out of the hospital’s Westerville and Dublin offices.
“Undergrad, when I was running competitively, is when I really saw the power of nutrition and how that can make a big difference in sports performance,” Minagawa says. “That’s what got me interested in becoming a dietitian.”
Working with younger athletes also helps Minagawa to stick to her own advice.
“It keeps me accountable,” she says. “That’s helped me reassess what I’m putting into my body and again ask the questions, ‘Am I eating adequately? Am I fueling my body with the right foods to help me fuel for my passion in running?’”
Right now, Minagawa isn’t training for any race in particular, though she intends to go after the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials qualifying time, which has become significantly faster than the previous standard of 2:45:00. She now will have to run under 2:37:00 for the opportunity to compete in the trials.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” she says. “But I’m excited because it’s not impossible.”
Minagawa treats preparation as a long game and doesn’t take any runs for granted.
“I think running is consistency over time, so being patient and doing the little things that help, like, again, being a dietician, it plays such a big role just in terms of health,” she says.
Most of all, Minagawa knows she’ll never fly solo if she wants to achieve her potential in the sport.
“You can’t do running alone,” she says. “You need the support of your friends and your families to help you to be the best athlete you can be, because if you’re not happy, you’re not going to be able to perform.”
Courtesy of Sakiko Minagawa
Claire Miller is the editor. Feedback is welcome at cmiller@cityscenemediagroup.com.
