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Published: February 28th 2012
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Shiny medal
My precious! I boarded the highway bus for Tokyo early Saturday morning filled with trepidation. I'd been battling with a sore throat all week, a gammy left foot and I had a thumping headache from accidentally boiling my brain the night before.
My friend Sumiko belongs to a spa and asked if I'd like to join her Friday night. I thought it sounded a perfect way to relax in anticipation of the run on Sunday. From Sumiko's description, I wasn't quite sure what to expect - she'd said something about lying in room on hot stones to sweat. This was a pretty good description as it transpired. After we'd donned our pyjama style cotton outfits, we entered a dimly lit, steam filled, very hot room. On each side were heated stone beds. We had to roll out a large towel onto our stone slabs, then using a sand timer, lay on our fronts for five minutes, then on our backs for another five. It was very peaceful - the place was quiet apart from the sound of bird song they piped in. Closing my eyes I could imagine I was on some tropical beach somewhere, with the hot sun beating down on me.
After ten minutes we went out to a small waiting room to drink water and cool off, then back in for another ten minutes basking. This carried on for about an hour, by which point I was boiling hot and a sweaty, dripping mess. Just as we were leaving the room for the last time I noticed Sumiko had been using a small wooden block as a cushion for her head - I'd not realised I had one and had just lay my head on the towel.......hence the mother of all headaches when I left the place, having probably boiled away a few brain cells during the hour.
I put the sore throat down to nerves and hoped it didn't turn into a cold before the race. My left foot had been hurting me all week too - I'm not sure why - I think I've strained something in the arch.....so all in all things weren't looking too good for me. I was booked into a comfortable hotel for the night though, so after collecting my race bib at the marathon exhibition hall (where amazingly amongst the thousands of runners, I managed to bump into one of the elementary school teachers from Takagi who was also running, and we wished each other gambatte!), I went for a final carb loading pasta meal and retired for an early night, hoping for the best.
As luck would have it I felt much better in the morning and even my foot wasn't too bad. I still had visions for having to pull out half way, but I tried not to think about that too much. My hotel was ten minutes from the finish, so I had a bit of a mission to get across central Tokyo to Shinjuku for the start. The start was buzzing with people when I got there, but from the outset the whole race was amazingly well organised (you'd expect nothing less in Japan!). I got myself to my starting area (with my little legs I'm a slow runner, so I was way at the back with all the fun runners and people in wacky outfits). During the chilly hour wait for the off it was fun to spot all the mad costumes, such as the tiny little old Japanese lady stood next to me, wearing a bright pink and yellow dress and curly rainbow wig. On route I passed a very skinny Spiderman, Darth Vader, Micky Mouse and Sully from Monsters Inc.
I had to keep pinching myself as we started running around central Tokyo. To be part of an event of 36 thousand runners, in such an amazing city. It was such a rush of excitement
seeing all the famous sights - we ran past the Tokyo Tower, through Ginza, past the Sky Tree (now the tallest tower in the world), Asakusa Temple, Tsukiji fish market and on to a finish at Tokyo Big Sight.....and the support from the crouds on route was amazing - at no point did we lack people cheering us on, waving banners or kids holding out their hands for high fives. There were water stops every 2km, plenty of sports drinks and after the 20km mark, stalls with bananas, bread and dried fruit.
The absolute highlight of the whole event for me, came at around the 7km mark, when we ran past a group of supporters playing the YMCA over loud speakers and the entire crowd I was running with started doing all the moves together, ....very surreal but utterly fabulous!
Whilst my foot was fine as I ran (and I ran the entire way without walk breaks), annoyingly I started to suffer from a dodgy tummy after 20km (probably all the sports drinks taking their toll) and had to stop at least 3 times to nip to the loos! This added at least 20 minutes to my time, as each break had long queues. I'd hoped to match or better my time for Edinburgh last April, which was 5 hours and 6 minutes, but by the end of this marathon I was just thankful to see the finish line. My final time was 5 hours and 29 minutes. Pretty slow, but I'm glad I managed to run the whole way, and I didn't feel too bad afterwards. And best of all I've got a nice shiny medal for my collection. I think I should give the whole marathon thing a rest now for the sake of my feet and knees, which have been a bit creaky today going up and down the stairs at school.
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Walter
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For want of a better expression, a-ma-zing. Well done Vic!