Finally! I'm writing of the long awaited trip to Japan to run Tokyo marathon to complete my final race of the six star marathons. On top of the difficulty of training for a spring marathon during the Chicago winter, it has been a long, frustrating experience to get here (first few sections will be some venting)…
2020
I registered in the summer of 2019 to run the 2020 Tokyo Marathon in March 2020. After completing the majority of my training plan, the world went into a tail spin due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the race was cancelled 3 weeks prior to the race for most runners and limited to elite runners only. I was able to leverage the training that I had completed and found another marathon to run that same weekend:
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| Snickers Marathon in Albany, Georgia |
2021
As a result of the 2020 cancellation, all runners were stuck in limbo waiting for the world to return to normal. Other marathons in the world started to allow runners to return but Japan kept its borders restricted. As a result, the 2020 marathon runners were pushed to March 2021 and the 2021 marathon was planned for October 2021.
Given the uncertainty due to COVID, I elected to run the 2021 fall marathon as I expected that COVID restrictions would remain in the spring...
As the 2021 March marathon neared, borders remained closed and rather than only defer those runners they pushed all runners from March to October, and then the October runners to 2022 thus wrecking two sets of runners' travelling plans…
2022
With borders now open for most of the globe but still not for American trying to travel to Japan, I trained in anticipation running the Tokyo Marathon in March 2022 but also was had the 2022 Boston Marathon (in April) that I qualified for at the Albany marathon for which I was looking forward to running.
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Borders remained closed in March 2022 to Americans and all runners unable to run due to COVID restrictions were deferred to the 2023 Tokyo marathon.
2023
And now we’re up to date to today where the race appears to be on track. For most of 2022, Japanese borders remained closed until late fall they re-opened but only with an organized tour so I booked a marathon tour, and then in December the borders fully re-opened so I cancelled this tour to travel with friends and family for marathon.
Given all of the runners waiting to run, the 2023 marathon was expected to have the most six star finishers ever (approximated 3,000 runners planned to complete their last six star marathon in Tokyo with less than 10,000 six star finishers-to-date).
I flew out the Wednesday prior to the marathon on 13 hour and 15 minute flight and many of the passengers were runners:
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| Random runners on the Tokyo flight |
I arrived in Tokyo on time and went to the expo once Melissa and Terry’s flight arrived. This was a bit of a time crunch of taking a taxi to arrive at the expo with about 10 minutes before the registration cut-off but I was able to pick up my packet (which included the 2020 medal!?) and then we went to the Airbnb to rest after limited rest from the prior day’s travels.
Friday
With the jet lag, most of the group woke up near 2am ready for the day but we went to breakfast closer to 8am. The jet lag gradually improved over the remainder of the trip but all of us had similar experiences. We found a close restaurant for breakfast and we’re impressed by the waitress
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| Robot waitress that brought food to each table |
After breakfast, we spent some time wandering Akihabara before our go-kart tour of the city:
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| 1st of many noodles on the trip |
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| Go-kart gang |
Following the morning go-kart tour we went to the Tokyo Sky Tree for an aerial view of the city (the tower is 450m) and had dinner and Andy Shin's Hinomoto:
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| View from the Sky Tower |
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| Sushi! |
Saturday
I awoke near 4:30am still trying to adjust to the jet lag and waited for the sun rise near 6a before able to go for a run to loosen up before the race the following day:
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| Ueno Park Pond (with 1st Cherry Blossoms of the trip) |
For our last day before the race, we planned a tour of the Mt. Fuji area by car. In retrospect, I would highly recommend the train as this the 4 of us rode the 50 miles in a fairly cramped Mercedes Benz sedan for approximately 2 hours each way in the typical Tokyo traffic.
The Tokyo pre-race day meals were a little different than the usual of marinara sauce with noodles:
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| Pizza near Mt. Fuji |
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| Pre-race noodles |
Sunday
Race day morning was smooth as the race started at 9:10a leaving ample time to get to the start even with a few hiccups. For the first time on the trip, I experienced that Tokyo had multiple train operators, which resulted in a few minute scramble when trying to board a train with the wrong pass.
The race was finally starting to feel attainable once I showed health record on my phone to the organizers to allow entry to the start area:
- Positive confirmation of normal bodily temperature and no COVID symptoms for the week prior to the race. This was logged each day manually by me
- Negative COVID test results for 2 back-to-back days once arriving in Japan
The last curveball of the pre-race routine was I managed to find the block of porto johns with short lines (8 people rather than 50). However, when getting to the toilet, I quickly learned I was in line for the non-western toilet, which is a pit style hole.
The actual race was great and surreal to finally be able to run. I was able to find Melissa and Terry a few times during the run by coordinating with our phones:
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| Feeling great near mile 7 |
Beyond just the spectators, the entire race was very packed with runners and more so than I recall from the other majors:
My run went much better than planned after thinking that my training plan was OK in the winter. I was able to keep a faster pace and expected to hit a wall with 3 miles remaining, which was much later than expected, so I was very happy with my finish time (3:01:40)!
I was quite sore and slowly made my way through the finish area between the stations with rotations on the ground as needed with sore legs. The journey from the finish area to the packet pick-up was very far (felt over 1 mile) and the worst part was the blockaded roads where people continued to follow crosswalk signs to not walk even with no cars!? After resting along the way, the group met up at home to rest, shower, and get ready to head out to celebrate
Monday
With our last day, we spent then morning at the Tsukiji fish market sampling fresh seafood (both raw and cooked) before heading to the airport:
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| First market entrance |
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The flight home was filled with runners returning to the US and many slow walks up-and-down stairs! The trip was far too short, approx. 4 days, but memorable:
- Japan was easy to get around with the use of google maps.
- Trains were extremely clean and timely. When landing at O'Hare airport and boarding the blue line to get home it felt as if I was going back in time.
- 7-elevens and vending machines everywhere with decent food and hot coffee.
It was special to complete the six star marathons, after so many delays due to the pandemic, with friends and family! It feels somewhat odd to have no races on the calendar but I expect this will be short-lived...
