Tokyo Marathon 2014

Tokyo Marathon race recap! This may go on a bit as I tend to ramble.

Flight to Tokyo was interesting – a long non-stop from Boston on the Japan Air 787 Dreamliner. The trippy thing was the sun out my window stayed at the same angle in the sky for like eight hours, before climbing again as we lost latitude.

Day before the race was the expo (which was huge, and packed), then after that we met up with KPH for carbo loading purposes at an “Italian” place called Agio in Shinjuku. Despite our best efforts we learned at the last moment that the plain non-meat tomato sauce did, in fact, have chicken stock in it. It’s difficult to eat vegan in Japan.

Race morning I woke up at 2am and could not go back to sleep. The race had a late start (9:10) so I had hoped to sleep until 6 but my internal clock is still messed up. At 4am I gave up going back to sleep and decided to get up for real. Had coffee & bagel (with travel peanut butter courtesy of Chrissy).

At 8am I walked the few blocks to the start. I was able to find D right outside security, fortuitous. We went in, found our baggage trucks then split up as our respective corrals were in different directions. I was in Corral D which was on the same street as the start – I could see the grandstand and so on while the announcer was doing their thing. At first they were doing both Japanese and English but at some point just switched over to all Japanese. Still, I got the jist. I was standing next to a woman from Columbus, OH here – I thought it was interesting that I ran Columbus last year while she ran Boston. Also interesting, she was one of the few women in the whole corral – the ratio was easily 100:1 or worse. I don’t know what ratio for the whole race was but my view it was almost all dudes.

Start: The race gets underway with a cannon burst of confetti. As I got closer I realized they were little paper hearts. It was incredibly dense, lots of traffic. I don’t think they started the corrals in waves, I think they just let everyone go at once. People were zigging and zagging every which way. It was clear there were slower runners in the earlier corrals, I had read about & expected this and just worked through it while trying to get up to speed. Start itself was in Shinjuku, then through Shibuya, then on eastward.

12K: The race ran past the Tokyo Tower here, but I completely missed it even though it was right next to the course. I’m not sure how. Sometimes running and being a tourist are contraindications.

15K: I’m looking for KPH & Natsuko here but couldn’t see them in the crowd. Later Natsuko told me she saw me but only when I was on the far side of the course, not when we looped around nearer to where they were standing. Still helpful to know they were there even if I didn’t find them. The crowd was several people deep all along this section.

16K: Some Japanese guy yelled Rock Chalk at me here. Awesome.

20K: “Go Kansas!” Excited to hear this and a push through the half. Around here I give up hope that I’ll magically run into KPH.

Half: There was not timing mat at the half mark so I’m missing that point! Interesting. Not sure what my splits were as the GPS data was unreliable (more on that further down).

27K: There’s a shrine here. Actually this is the Asakusa Kaminarimon Gate (the Thunder Gate), which leads up to Senso-Ji, a shrine I visited the last time I was in Tokyo.

30K: Back along the flow of the course again. Here I start actively looking for D coming back the other direction, and this occupies my time (I never see him, unfortunately). I’m starting to struggle a bit here, and take two half bananas, which help. I don’t finish my sports beans, which was probably a mistake. I have some nausea from here on out.

32K: I swear to you, it was snowing here. Or frozen misting, or something. I felt it hitting my face. Generally speaking, this race was cold. I was thinking I’d warm up as the day went on, but never really did. I’m really glad I decided to wear the long sleeve compression layer. After the race was over I was fairly well hypothermic in the finishing queue.

35K: Struggling. Crowds are sparser but not non-existent like I had read happened in the past. I decide to kick my headphones in around here for the first time in the race though. It’s more anti-social but I’m running head down focused on the road trying to hang on to my dwindling pace at this point.

Finish: I finally find the 42K marker around the final turn. There’s a false finish structure type thing here you run through that says 195M to go til the real finish. I pull it together and finish things the best I can. My final time (both watch and chip) is 3:36:17. Not a PR, but it’s among my faster times (it’s actually my 5th fastest behind Chicago, Nashville, Austin and Bayshore). There’s quite a walk from the finish to get medals, water, swag bag. I am sick sick sick during this part, and am freezing. Much like Nashville, severe thermal regulation issues for the next hour, even after I make it inside the conference center. Which for whatever reasons has concrete floors and no places to sit.

The numbers: I don’t want to get too hung up on the numbers for this race since my main goal was the experience, not as a goal race. But still, I am the type of person I am so here’s some of my thought process on my race results. First, I couldn’t get a GPS lock at the start, so I knew from the beginning that my distance might be a bit off. Hindsight being what it is, I should have planned to switch the watch to kilometers, or even just skipped GPS for a watch and 5K split goal list. Anyway. I thought I was running 7:30 miles for the first half of the race, which would have been well below my PR pace. But the “miles” my watch was reporting were less than a mile, due to the interference from tall buildings (you can see my “path” zig zag around like crazy on the above blowup of my GPS map. That said, looking at official the 5K mat splits I actually was under PR pace through 25K, and only 8 seconds behind at 30K. I didn’t realize this, unfortunately. I thought I was well ahead of PR pace and at what I thought was the ~20 mile mark (in actuality, it was closer to 19) I calculated I could run the last six miles at an energy conserving 8:30 split and finish under my best – this was not the case. At each mark where I was able to recalculate the goal kept shifting, and it wasn’t until the last 4K or so where I realized I had fallen off pace. That was a little disappointing. I think part of the mistake was giving myself mental permission to ease off. This isn’t the end game mindset that’s going to be required to BQ in the future, and merely beating my own prior best shouldn’t be a sufficient goal. Finishing as strong as possible should be. I know this sounds obvious but I’m writing it now so that the next time my race-fuzzeled brain is dealing with this scenario the decision will already have been made.

Official splits from here, in comparison to my current PR race from Chicago.

All in all, the race was a positive experience. My 20th marathon. It kinda blows my mind when I think on them in aggregate.

Next up! A week of vacation in Japan. But next up race-wise, Wrightsville Beach Marathon in three weeks (with YJP!), and the Georgia Marathon a week after that.