Race Report:  Tokyo Marathon.

For those who just want to know how I did, this picture is the Cliff notes version of how I did.  The items in the picture are called, "Japanese lashes."  I went 3:05:06.  I subjected myself of 1 lash for every minute that I went over 3 hours.  I know, there should only be 5 lashes and a few sprinkles, but that's why they call it, tough love.  Without it, none of us will ever learn anything in life.  I'm just glad that I only went 5 minutes over and not 60 minutes over or there would have been some permanent scars on my girlish figure.

After completing the Ironman World Championship in Nice, France in September, I thought that I had a solid enough fitness base to legitimately attempt a sub-3 marathon before father times catches up to me.  All I needed was to shave 7 seconds off of my PR.  Doable, I thought.  Well, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  That, right there, pretty much defined my training for this marathon. 

Coming into this race, I knew that I didn't have sub-3 fitness.  If you do this sport long enough, you can pretty easily recognize what PR fitness feels like.  I've been using the cold weather as excuses all winter, so the volume just wasn't there to hold that kind of pace for 26.2 miles.  My bread and butter marathon long run regiment, which is how I gauge my fitness, consists of 6-10 miles at or faster than marathon pace.  I don't think I've put together ONE long run that had more than 1 mile at marathon pace or faster.  Even that 1 mile was a sufferfest.  I also questioned whether age had finally caught up to me since the leg turnovers never got anywhere near what I was used to.  The legs felt heavy all winter, even after recovery week and a few donuts boosters.

The Tokyo marathon course profile had the first 3 miles going slightly downhill.  When I saw that, I wanted to see if I could hold 6:51 pace for the first 3 miles and then just dial it back and enjoy the fun run for the rest of the day.  I'd figure that with the magic of taper that that was doable.  With that in mind, I tapered like a mofo.  That was the race game plan ... see if the old girlish figure still remembers what it's like to run at that pace, even with terrain assistance.

I lined up about 10 rows behind the 3 hour pacers.  I knew ahead of time that the 3 hour pacers, like all pacers running at 3:45 or faster, were running at gun time pace vs chip time pace, so the pace would be a quick one.  Normally that would matter to me, but since I was only planning to run a fast pace for the first 3 miles, the challenge of running even faster than that excited me.

After the first 3 miles, I felt pretty relax, even at the faster pace.  I was expecting the lungs to burn after 5k.  It didn't.  My legs didn't feel heavy like I was expecting it to, so I said to myself, "hey, let's see how far we can push this before we crash and burn."  The adrenaline and the excitement of the race pushes one to do some crazy things, so why not?  If you are going to crash and burn into horrible death march then let's do it like you mean it.  That was my mentality.

I got to the 1/2 way mark at 1:28:59.  I think the 3 hour pacer got there a good 30 seconds+ before I did.  I was running back and forth with a couple of Irish runners who were trying to go sub-3.  We conversed among ourselves and said that those 3 hour pacers where legitimately trying to run a 2:55 chip time pace.  Being Irish, there may or may not have been a few 4 letter words in there to describe the pacers' speed.  It was kind of nuts that I lost vision of the pacers at various points after the 13.1 mile mark.

I was still pretty relaxed, as relaxed as one could be at that pace, at the 1/2 way mark.  The weather was pretty ideal at that point, low-mid 40s.  Half of me wanted to dial it back.  The other half said, "you're a stud, don't punk out now."  I thought to myself that perhaps I was too harsh on myself.  Perhaps, with all those miles from all those years of running and muscle memory had made my body less dependent on run volume.  Perhaps, today would be the day that I lay down a sub-3.

Well, boys and girls, if you've ran a marathon, you know that the freshness that you feel at 13.1 is fools' gold.  And, that's what happened.  At around mile 20, I knew that my sub-3 day was over.  The goal now was to not walk myself into the finish line.  It was a bit of a sufferfest, but not enough of a sufferfest to curse at smiling grandmothers walking across the street, just enough to say, "don't walk, don't walk!"

Below was my pace for different segments of this race.  It kinda showed the slow progression to a very painful death.  Death came between the 35 km mark.

A few notes:

1.  Somewhere during the middle of the race, I got to see the world class pro runners cranking on the opposite side of the road.  I've seen them run on TV, but never in person.  The two things that I noticed were how long and powerful their strides were.  You could really tell the difference in strides and  power between them and the 2:30 faster amateurs that were coming behind them.

2.  Approaching the 42 km mark, I was like, "thank God the race is over." ... but then there was no finisher's arch.  WTF!  You would get to the 42 km marker and there is a turn. Double WTF!  As it turns out, you can thank the Queen of England for that.  The marathon isn't 42 km.  It's 42.195 km.  The "Queen" didn't want to move her castle 0.195 km closer to the finish line, so she had her peasants move the finish line 0.195 km closer to her castle.  I blame my public school upbringing for not being more in tune with this. In my defense, between global warming and donuts Wednesdays, I had a lot of things running through my head at that moment in time.

3.  This has got to be the cleanest marathons I've ever run.  You usually see gel packs and trash all over the place.  Runners were quite disciplined in throwing away trash where it needed to go instead of just randomly throwing it to the ground like they were a somebody.

4.  The food in Tokyo were a lot cheaper than I remembered the last time that I was there.  A bowl of pho is about 30% cheaper than in the U.S.   They don't tip in Japan, so if you add a tip to that, a bowl of pho is about 50% cheaper than the U.S.   I would say that a bowl of ramen noodle is about 20-30% cheaper in Tokyo than the U.S.

5.  "Fast food" in Japan looks to be quite wholesome and healthy.  And, it's a lot cheaper than fast food in America. 

6.  The metro system in DC needs to take a few lessons from the Japanese.  Their numbering and naming conventions made it quite easy to maneuver around the city.

7.  All of my DC friends, who are always griping about tourists not knowing which side of the metro escalator to stand, should know that the Japanese stand on the left hand side and walk down the right hand side.  The moral to that story is that, no matter which side of the escalator you stand, somewhere in the world you are right and somewhere in the world you are wrong. 

8.  Tokyo has got to be one of the safest major cities on the planet.  Cyclists don't even lock up their bikes.  In DC, not only will they steal your bike while it's locked in your car.  They will steal it while it's locked  in your car while you are in the driver's seat waiting for the light to turn green.

9.  Tokyo has also got to be one of the cleanest cities on the planet.  In Singapore, they keep their streets clean due to threats of a thousand lashes if you spit gum on the street.  In Tokyo, the citizens seem to keep their city clean because it's the right thing to do, not because of anything else.

10.  They didn't give out a finisher's shirt like most marathon.  Instead, they give out really nice quality ponchos.   It's a cross between a bathrobe and something "Candy" would wear at a nightclub in Clarendon.  It's got a lot of vents and if you stand at a certain angle, you could see things that might blind you for the rest of your life.   I can think only only 2 places where that poncho could legitimately be worn, at the finish line of a marathon and on a Vietnamese Onlyfan page.  I thought about wearing it, over my birthday suit, while walking around Tokyo, but I thought better of it.  I mean, we weren't in Clarendon anymore.