3rd – 4th of March – Post-race and checking out

I had booked a spot for the run’s victory dinner as I usually do when possible. Previous victory dinners booked with and handled by the travel company were held in a tower (Berlin), on a river (New York) or just more informally going to a nearby restaurant. Apparently in this case it was all part of the package deal the travel company purchased with the organizers, so we and others staying at this hotel were picked up and driven to what was a very fancy place apparently often used for wedding celebrations and the like.

It turned out to not be a sit-down dinner but rather a reception-like thing where in different rooms you had different tables serving different foods; fish, sushi, beef, etc. There were a lot of people and it all felt a bit chaotic and crowded resulting in sometimes long lines to be able to get any food – something I didn’t need after running a marathon. We as a group couldn’t get together and settle down and talk about our day as everyone spread out as soon as we arrived. I was also part of the second “shift”; those finishing the run in less than 3:30 were brought here before us, but unfortunately they were a bit delayed so we couldn’t enter until half an hour later than planned – but without getting an extra half an hour in the end. So apart from feeling crowded, chaotic, impersonal it also felt very rushed towards the end. And as the portions were typical reception portions (as in: a couple of bites) you didn’t really feel you had time to not stand in a queue somewhere to get something to eat as you were hungry.

As least when going there and back the bus didn’t take the tunnel like in the morning, so yay?

Coming back to the hotel we all agreed that the “dinner” had been a major letdown and disappointment, especially considering the steep price we had had to shell out for it. We all went to the hotel’s top floor (30^th) to visit the bar where we had a few drinks before turning in for the night. I believe the majority of the group will be leaving for the airport tomorrow at 0700 while I’ll be sleeping in for a bit (if the jetlag lets me) before continuing my trip.

(it’s worth mentioning that the travel company sent out a mail to all participants after coming home acknowledging the bad experience we had with the victory dinner. They had decided to – on their own – refund a part of the price we had paid for the dinner. They had confronted the organizers with the bad reviews but they had – naturally – completely stonewalled them. Amazingly done by the travel company!).

The following morning I had my last breakfast at the hotel before checking out and heading for the train. It had been a pretty great hotel – high end and several breakfast restaurants (but the two major ones basically had identical buffet selections). Usually when riding an elevator you hear a constant hum and hear another elevator or the counterweight flying by but here you could hear absolutely nothing. They were completely quiet. There were 8 elevators and when you called for one, one of them would ding and then ding a second time when it arrived. That way you had time to get ready for when it arrived and saving time instead of having to rush around when it arrived. They had an entire area blocked off as it was only used for wedding parties. Multiple restaurants. Less than 3 minutes from the nearest train station – but you had to take a train to get close to Tokyo Central. It was inconveniently located and expensive as hell – someone checked the prices if they booked by themselves and concluded the organizers were making absolute bank having this part of the race package. Oh well – in the end it meant being able to run the Tokyo marathon.

Final (?) update for the Abbott World Marathon Majors

As mentioned previously the Tokyo marathon opened up for more participants through travel agents, so suddenly I got moved up 2 years meaning that instead of running Tokyo marathon and completing my 6 Marathon Majors in March 2026 I got the opportunity to do it in 2024. I didn't need much convincing to do that.

This means that I have now completed the 6 marathons majors as follows:

Berlin - September 2019 - 3:58:16
New York - November 2019 - 4:11:53
Boston - April 2022 - 3:59:30
Chicago - October 2022 - 3:58:02
London - April 2023 - 3:58:42
Tokyo - March 2024 - 3:59:06

So this is the final update for the marathon majors.

Well, maybe not completely final; Cape Town and Sidney are considered candidate runs in an attempt to be accepted as the 7th and 8th majors, and further out Shanghai is also lurking on the horizon. Interesting times ahead. But for now, I'm enjoying the accomplishment and my new medal.

3rd of March – Tokyo marathon

We were getting picked up by a bus at 0645 but not having fully recovered from my jetlag I once again avoided my alarm and thus had a relatively relaxing morning – all considering. I had expected to be able to see parts of the city on the way to the starting area, but a few minutes after leaving the hotel we dipped down into a tunnel, and a few minutes before arriving at our destination we came back up onto street level. So that was… something.

 

As this was my last of the 6 majors I got this to put on my shirt. 

I put it on the back and I was surprised at how much response I got from others with encouragements and thumbs-ups. 

It was a cold morning and there was nothing to do in the starting area in the 1½ hours before they’d close the starting corrals, so the wait felt even longer.

As opposed to similarly-sized runs we were all sent off in a rolling start instead of in waves. So when the gun went off at 0910 there was very little extra waiting necessary, the only wait was for the runners ahead of you – and app. 8 minutes later I crossed the starting line. The start was made possible by the fact that the start was on some very wide streets so despite it being crowded (which naturally happens when 38000 runners set off at almost the same time) it never felt uncomfortably crowded.

 

And we're off!

Being a cold morning it was a bit rough starting but reaching around 4-5 km we finally passed some space between the tall buildings and were hit by the sun and thereby got some actual warmth which greatly improved the conditions. For the rest of the run we often switched between sun and shade with significant change in temperatures. While there was a breeze we were protected from it most of the time – when we weren’t it was nice to be cooled down, though it didn’t take long before it got cold. During the last 7-8 km the wind had dwindled and being out in the open it was by far the hottest part of the course.

The course had a lot of repetition in form of going out and back on the same streets. It didn’t bother me as much as I had expected; you got to see the same from a different angle (which might as well have been a completely different place not knowing the city and focusing on trying to survive the run) and you got to greet other runners even if they were far ahead or behind you. At around 14-ish km and the following few km we were running parallel with the course’s +/- 31 km marker and at the point in time I got there I got to see Kipchoge racing along (who turned out to “only” be at around 10^th place at the time) so we got to cheer him and some of the other elites along.

 

I may be smiling on several photos but this was how I genuinely felt. 

The Japanese are quite reserved, even in cases like this, so you never got the chaos and noise from the onlookers that you’d experience during the large US races or London. But there weren’t many passages along the way where there weren’t people cheering us on. But if you managed to gain eye contact with someone their enthusiasm spiked and you got your own little personal energetic cheer to get you along.

 

Tokyo Tower in the background.

Due to the wide streets it was difficult to avoid excessive zig-zagging when getting water and getting back into the flow, so when crossing the finish line my watch said 43,17 km. I speculated that some of that could have been due to the GPS signals bouncing between the tall buildings, but those I talked with after the run had registered similar distances, so apparently the wide streets just resulted in more cross-movement than usual.

Despite the extended distance (and a way too long wait at a toilet break where I lost around 3 minutes) I still managed to reach my goal of completing below 4 hours – my finishing time was 3:59:06. I came in as 13089 out of 35411 overall (top 36,96%), 10905 out of 26682 men (top 40,87%) and 1929 out of 3757 in my age group (51,34%). A result I am quite happy with and quite similar to other equal runs. 

 

The final majors medal representing all 6 marathons 

(Berlin, New York, Chicago, Boston, London and Tokyo). 

Crossing the finishing line meant that I had completed all the 6 marathon majors and when getting the probably least inspiring medal for the run I could continue waddling along and pick up my 6 star finisher medal, one that is significantly more impressive-looking. We also got handed a back that got filled with energy drink, water, bath salts(??), wipes, heating blanket and a parka. There was a miserable lack of snacks which I crave after such a run. I found “my” bus and only a few minutes later we were off and returned to the hotel – this time above ground.

Returning to the hotel I had a long much-needed shower before heading back outside and visited the kiosk right outside to stock up on snacks for the afternoon. By time, too, as I was walking around slightly lightheaded.

27th of February – 2nd of March – Tokyo pre-race

I had booked a direct flight to Tokyo to make it easy for myself, and everything was going smooth until I checked into the hotel at the airport the evening before departure. When having to pay I realized I had completely forgotten my PIN for the card I usually use for my trips. Finally managing to overcome that bump on the road the following steps that led me to board the plane the next morning went swimmingly. The 13-hour flight went well – we were maybe half an hour late when leaving but arrived just on time in Tokyo. Thank you to The Creator, MI: Dead Reckoning 1, A Haunting in Venice, Christopher Robin and Raya and the Last Dragon for entertainment along the way (when I wasn’t sleeping).

  

The Caucasian mountains. 

We were deplaned at what seemed to be the furthest away gate so it took a while to get to immigration and picking up my bag. Waiting for my bag I bumped onto two others doing the same tour so we decided to share a taxi to the hotel. There was no obviously easy way getting there using public transport (and if you haven’t been there before it feels even further away) so taking a taxi seemed like the easiest way to go. I had ordered a SIM-card to pick up outside the arrival hall but it turned out that that booth didn’t open until half an hour after we got there – fortunately it was easy to change the pick-up location, so having changed it to somewhere closer to the hotel we left to grab a taxi.

Reaching the hotel after a 15 minute drive we were informed it was too early to check in as it was only around 10, so we handed over our bags and took the train towards the center – or rather closer to Tokyo station. Getting there we went our separate ways and I tried understanding the layout of the station to figure out where to pick up my SIM card and buy a travel card instead of manually paying for each trip on public transport.

After finally being successful with both my endeavors I had a walk around in the park outside the royal palace and around for a bit before taking the train back to the hotel and relaxed.

  

The view from my hotel room. 

Long live jet lag; I was starting nodding at around 1800 and an hour later I gave up the fight and went to bed and immediately passed out. Unfortunately it didn’t last as long as I would have liked so at 0200 I was wide awake. I barely got any more sleep, but at least it meant I got to have breakfast at 0700 wight when the restaurant opened so it wasn’t crowded when I raided the buffet.

Thursday morning I was once again awake early, and at 0544 I noticed some shaking which I first assumed was from someone slamming their door. I quickly realized that a 30-floor building, where I was on the 16^th floor, needed more than a slammed door to shake, and for 15-20 seconds we experienced a 5.2 earthquake. Needless to say it left me a bit shaken.

The runner’s expo was a half an hour’s walk from the hotel so around 1000 I went on my way there and ended up spending around an hour picking up my kit and having a look around. Despite arriving a few hours after opening the first day most official merchandise had already been sold out – but apparently the largest size they had had was a Japanese large which meant in any case there would have been nothing that would have been able to fit me anyway.

 

My first sushi. Medium, fatty and "special" tuna.

Afterwards I went to the Ginza district where I went to the old fish market and had sushi for lunch. What a first go at sushi in Japan! The market was packed with small eateries – all of them seemingly high quality. After a bit of walking around I returned to the hotel and in the evening the travel group met with the guides to get information on the following days and a kit with bus tickets to and from the race, official jacket and other small bibs and bobs. The official jacket was apparently something only international runners received and were therefore made using international sizing. But as you ordered using only one size when signing up for the race the XXL runner’s shirt – using Japanese sizing – fit me nicely, whereas the jacket – non-Japanese XXL – was quite loose. 

 

Down near the hotel.

 

The following day – Friday – I had a walk around Tokyo across the center from Ginza to Shinjuku where I had a lovely bowl of ramen before taking the train back and resting for the evening.

Saturday morning 7 of us from the group did the morning run with a 40-minute train ride both ways. Pickup of the run’s number went fine, and then standing outside in the cold breeze for half an hour to see a ceremony with dancing and music, a bit of warm-up and talking mostly in Japanese. There were 5 starting groups and we were in the last – and with talks and whatnot it took 5 minutes to send off each group. And the 5km route turned out to be 4,7km instead. We should probably have started off with circling the sports field where we started twice instead of the single time we did before heading out on the course. But like with everything else about this it felt pretty chaotic and unorganized, as if it had been an afterthought organized a few weeks ago. To their (slight) defense this was the first time doing this in 5 years so they may have been a bit rusty, but with only 1000 participants it should have been easy compared to tomorrow’s marathon! A single water bottle was handed to you crossing the finish line together with a small medal, and we were soon on our way back to the hotel.

 

View from the hotel.

Quick lunch, resting and pasta dinner before being back in the hotel and trying to figure out how to dress for tomorrow’s run. The bus is leaving from the hotel for the start at 0645 so there will be no sleeping in – but with my current jetlag that will likely not be an issue.

The land of uncooked fish

According to my last update I was to run the Tokyo marathon in 2026. Towards the end of September last year I received a mail from the marathon travel company letting me know that they had extra spots for the 2024 run. So my schedule got bumped up 2 years. The horror!

For obvious reasons I’m not traveling across the world for just a weekend to run a marathon so I’ll have a few other things planned for the trip.

27th of February – 3rd of March
Flying out to Tokyo on a direct flight; leaving around 1100 and arriving the following morning less than 14 hours later. I’ll have a few days to catch my breath and have a look around, including running a 5km run Saturday morning (“Friendship Run”) before running the marathon on Sunday the 3rd.

The course starts near Shinjuku at the Metropolitan Government office, going east and reaching north of Imperial Palace and Chiyoda City. From there we have a short detour north towards Ueno before returning to Chiyoda City, going further south before turning east and north to Taito City, returning the same way for a bit before going further east and south past the Tomioka Hachimangu Shrine before once again returning the way we came. Reaching the east side of Chiyoda City again and Tokyo station we continue further south all the way to Tamachi and passing Tokyo Tower and once again turning around, the same way back, finishing the run at Tokyo station.

Quite a bit of repetition on the course with running on roads in both directions which I’m not a big fan of, but it’s a completely new city for me so that’s a big plus.

4th – 8th of March
The day after the run, hopefully not too sore, I’ll be checking out from the hotel and taking the shinkansen to Osaka where I’ll spend the following four nights. Not many plans other than hanging out and seeing the city. I do have plans on the Wednesday to grab the train to Himeji to see the castle there – dated from 1333 and the largest in Japan – and on the way back stop by Kobe where I have a reservation for a hopefully delicious dinner centered around kobe beef.

8th – 21st of March
I’m doing a 2-week group tour starting in Tokyo so I’ll take the shinkansen back to Tokyo to meet with the group. From there we’ll start off going west to Kanazawa, continuing to Takayama, then going south all the way down to Hiroshima, and returning passing through Kyoto and Fujikawaguchiko (near Fuji) before returning to Tokyo. We’ll be spending 1-2 days at all the locations giving us time to see the city/area before shinkansen’ing on to the next location.

One could argue that a day (or the two in Kyoto) isn’t enough to see it everything a city has to offer, but if you were to stay long enough to be fully satiated these two weeks could have been more than double the time. I suspect it will likely at times feel a bit rushed but also a good balance between getting to see a large part of the country and still at least having some time at each stop.

22nd – 30th of March
Returning to Tokyo I’ll spend the rest of my trip there, having time to have a good look around and get to see the different parts of the city. I am looking into doing day trips out of the city, maybe north as that is a part that hasn’t been covered by the previous days. I have already booked a tour in Nagano on the 25th – not because it was the site for the winter Olympics in 1998, but you can see the
Japanese macaques (snow monkeys); those known for sitting in the hot pools surrounded by snow. Being relatively late in the winter there may not be much snow left when I get there, but I guess I’ll see when I get there. The cherry trees are forecast to start blossoming around the 22nd in Tokyo and being fully blossomed a week later, so I will just have time to see that (hopefully – depending on weather and such) before flying home Saturday morning.

As far as I can see this will be the longest trip I’ve been on yet, but considering how interesting the country (and food!) seems I felt it would be waste not spending some extra time now that I was there for the run. There will likely be a certain level of cultural shock when getting there but that’s all part of the fun, right?