Going the Distance

It’s over. It’s done. I’ve completed my first full marathon and, barring any further bouts of lunacy and self-delusion, I’m hoping it’s my last. In all likelihood, this was also my last race in Japan. Sure, I could sign up for another 10K or half-marathon before I leave, but I only have a dozen more weekends left to my time in this country. This time should be spent visiting all those places I’ve meant to visit and never have… or hanging out with many of the dear friends I’ve made here and never seem to have enough time to hang out with… or vacuum packing a three-room apartment full of stuff so that it can fit into two suitcases and a carry-on. This time should probably not be spent swathed in spandex and running through the streets with a couple hundred Japanese people; some of them swathed, not in spandex, but in fur and googly eyeballs.

For the most part, the marathon was a good race to end things on as it was, for the most part, a good race. And by “good,” I mean I didn’t die. Which, when you think about it, is rather surprising. Okay, admittedly, the statistical odds of dying during a marathon are not high. In fact, the death rate in marathons is less than 1 person per 100,000 participants. This is even less likely than your chances of dying by accidental poisoning (1 out of 192.6) or in a vehicular collision with a deer (1 in 28,831) or by being struck by lightning (1 out of 79,746.1). Yes, it’s more likely that you will be killed by lightning, than die running a marathon! Sheez, maybe if more people knew this little known fact, more people would run marathons… or, more likely, more people would avoid situations that might involve death by lightning.

Either way, my chances of dying during the marathon were not high, but this didn’t stop me from thinking such. Right up until I finished the marathon (a mere five and a half hours after I started said marathon), I was convinced that death was imminent. This was partly because I was feeling woefully unprepared to run 26.2 miles… at least woefully unprepared to run 26.2 miles at once. I maybe could have run 26.2 miles over the course of 26.2 days, but being able to do this all in one day and still remain alive at the end of the day seemed a pretty impossible feat.

Sure, I’d been “training” for this marathon for about six months. But, in all honesty, during that last month of so-called marathon training, the only thing I did to prepare myself for the big day was print up articles about what I should be doing to prepare myself… and then never read them. One such article, started spouting off wisdom about the importance of “synthesizing mitochondria” and “reducing the ravages of glycogen depletion.” I promptly stopped reading. I already had enough to worry about on marathon day like the likelihood of my knee caps self-destructing around mile 18 or my chances of being struck by lightning around mile 24; the last thing I needed to worry about was my mitochondria or my glycogen depletion levels… whatever the heck those things are.

The only pre-marathon advice that I did pay heed to was the advice telling me to taper my workouts the month before the race. In fact, I took my tapering so seriously, I almost stopped running completely. My two short runs during the week became one short run. My longer two or three-hour run at the end of the week became a shorter one-hour run punctuated by a few walking breaks, a couple water stops and maybe a quick trip through the Starbucks on the way home. Rather than two or three gym workouts per week, I’d manage one and spend the rest of my evenings attached to my couch, eating cookies…. hey, I was training for a marathon, here, so it was important to get plenty of carbs… and everyone knows that carbs in the form of chocolate chips are the best kind of carbs!

A couple days before the big race, I decided to make up for my painful lack of preparation and woeful disregard for my mitochondria, by reading a few articles about what I should be doing the 24 hours before the race. I knew I couldn’t make up for the last twenty-or-so days of sloth with 24-hours of good intentions and proper meal choices, but I could at least die trying (sorry, no statistics on what your chances are of “dying while trying” are, but I’d hazard a guess they’re higher than the odds of dying as a result of mountain lion attack, which is a surprisingly measly 1 in 12,077,105).

Luckily the articles giving advice for the day before the marathon made no mention of my mitochondria and, in fact, featured all kinds of tips that I was more than happy to follow, like “Don’t run the day before the race” and “Avoid eating salad.” Taking this advice to heart, my marathon buddy, Lisa, and I arrived in Lake Kawaguchi near Mt. Fuji on Friday night and spent the 24 hours before the race napping and eating pizza. Which, honestly, in my book, is about the best way you can spend a day. Again, I think a lot more people would do marathons if they knew their chances of dying were significantly lower than being struck by lightning and they were practically required to nap and eat pizza all the lifelong day beforehand… as well as the week afterwards (okay, so this is not advice gleaned from the marathon training experts but my own advice gleaned from my past week of marathon recovery, which has been spent eating pizza and napping).

Unfortunately, all the napping and pizza eating came to an abrupt end on Sunday morning around five. While the race didn’t start until the more reasonable hour of 7:30, we had to wake up at five to get ready before grabbing our shuttle from the hotel to the race course as the roads were scheduled to be closed later in the morning. After a harrowing shuttle bus ride (apparently, our shuttle bus driver didn’t think our chances of dying were quite high enough and decided to increase our chances of suffering cardiac arrest by sending the lumbering shuttle bus around hairpin turns at 80 miles per hour in the dark… I’m sure he would have added a little lightning and some mountain lions to the mix if he could have), we arrived at the registration area with a good hour and a half to kill before the starting gun went off.

We were definitely not alone.

There were 14,000 other racers signed up to take part in the event, which included three different races including an 11-km “Fun-Run”, a 27-km “A-Round-the-Lake Marathon” and the 42.195-km Full Marathon. At the ripe old hour of six o’clock in the morning, most of these 14,000 runners were huddled together with us in one of the many buildings designated as luggage drop-off points. Like us, our fellow runners looked sleepy and jittery.

Unlike us, our fellow runners seemed to be a bit better prepared for the cold weather. Convinced that the weather would be just as balmy and sunny as the weather had been in Kobe the previous week, I had only thought to pack my short-sleeve running top. But the weather in Kawaguchi that morning was decidedly chilly and overcast.

Rifling through my bag, I found a long-sleeve shirt which I could easily layer under my t-shirt but it was made of…. cotton. If you’ve read any website about distance running or any books on marathon training (or just skimmed them in a half-hearted attempt to appear knowledgeable and then fallen asleep at the first mention of mitochondria), you will quickly learn that cotton is very, very, very bad. In fact, runners even have a fun, catchy anti-cotton slogan: “cotton is rotten” (how they can get away with this blatantly cotton discriminatory attitude in this day and age is beyond me!).

Cotton doesn’t wick away moisture like fancy synthetic fibers with fancy synthetic names CoolMax and dri-fit, so this means the moisture stays on your skin, which can lead to very, very, very bad things like damp, cold skin or hypothermia or even death (which is actually not that likely; chances of death by hypothermia are only .3 per 100,000, again much less than the whole lightning thing).

Despite my knowledge of the evils of cotton, I threw caution to the wind and threw on the long sleeve top. While getting dressed in the ladies’ room, I started chatting with a fellow marathoner who was also changing… into a Mrs. Claus costume. Yes, that’s right, while I was fretting over whether or not I’d survive running 26.2 miles in a cotton t-shirt, this woman was happily getting decked out to run a full marathon in a red velveteen mini-dress with fake fur trim. While I don’t know much about the moisture-wicking properties of velveteen and fake fur, I had a feeling this particular ensemble would not be endorsed by any of the websites or books I had read… err, skimmed briefly before falling asleep.

Putting my fears of death by cotton behind me (after helping the very chatty Mrs. Claus zip up the back of her mini-dress), I marched out to the starting line. Well, actually, we marched out to where we believed the starting line to be. As the crowd was so huge, it was hard to discern exactly where we were meant to begin the race and we didn’t want to get too close to the starting line. Another helpful marathon day tip that I was more than happy to follow was the one suggesting first-time marathoners should line up at the back of the pack to avoid slowing down faster runners. The last thing I needed to do was risk being trampled to death by a bunch of speedy runners in moisture-wicking attire or, worse yet, by women in red velveteen mini-dresses (by the way, your chances of being trampled to death by humans: 1 in 13,220,000)

Once the starting gun finally went off, it took us about thirteen minutes to finally make it to the starting line. The first couple miles of the race were hilly but uneventful. The first part of the course, the 11-km “Fun-Run,” is through the the downtown area of Kawaguchi, which looks much like most downtown areas with the scenery consisting of convenient stores and restaurant parking lots. Luckily the crowd was supportive, and more than a few townspeople crowded outside of the convenient stores and inside parking lots to wave flags and cheer us on. Volunteers cheerfully handed out drinks, fruit and candy at the aid stations, and a high school jazz band was set up on the side of the road playing music.

After the “Fun-Run” racers finished, the rest of the racers started the first loop around the lake. Which, in case you’re wondering, happens to be a very, very, very big lake. And, as one of the lucky full-marathoners, I was scheduled to go around that very, very, very big lake not once, but twice. Luckily, it was a very beautiful lake, and the Fall colors were out in full-force. So, even though, we couldn’t see Mt. Fuji, due to the overcast weather, you could enjoy the view of the lake…. along with the sounds of the occasional high school jazz band.

Somewhere during my second loop around the lake, it started to hit me how incredibly long 26.2 miles can be. Sure, I knew 26.2 miles is pretty freaking long. I’d probably get tired driving that distance! But until you’re actually running it, it’s just a bunch of numbers. At the start of the race, I had been determined to run the majority of the race without walking too much, so that I could finish the race by the official cut-off time of six hours in order to get my marathon finisher’s t-shirt and certificate. I’m by no means a fast runner, so I knew that even if I ran the whole race I’d still be cutting it pretty close to the 6-hour finish time.

As the miles wore on and the soles of my shoes started to wear down, the idea of running 26.2 miles in under six hours just so I could get a t-shirt and a piece of paper with my name on it started to seem, well, pretty ridiculous. After all, I could go out and buy a t-shirt for a lot less money than it was going to cost me to get the new pair of kneecaps that I’d need after finishing this race.

As I started to feel more exhausted, the racers around me started to look the same way I felt. More and more people stopped running and started walking the race. Those people who could no longer walk had started limping or shuffling towards the finish. Some people had given up completely. There were shuttle buses set up at the aid stations to pick up those who couldn’t finish.

Somewhere around mile 23, I spotted this guy in a monkey costume. He looked beat. This was a man who woke up in the morning and decided to run a full marathon dressed in a full body monkey costume. This was a man who didn’t let things like common sense and the fear of non-moisture-wicking fibers get in his way. This was a man with panache, determination and, possibly, more than just a bit of insanity about him, and he had given up. How was I going to fight this thing if the Monkey Man couldn’t do it?!

Shortly after spotting the Monkey Man, I came across an old man standing on the side of the road playing the Rocky theme song on a kazoo. Despite the fact that I was tired and disheartened and becoming very sure that I would never see my finisher’s t-shirt, I did something amazing: I laughed… and I started to run just a little bit faster.

I ended up getting past the finish line in a little under five and a half hours. I collected my finisher’s t-shirt and certificate, and headed back to the luggage area where my friend was waiting, having finished the race earlier than me. We had a long trip back to Kansai and a full-day of work on Monday ahead of us, so we had no time to celebrate our successfully having just finished a marathon with the proper fanfare such an occasion warrants (I’m thinking a parade and a government holiday would have been nice). We had just enough time to grab a shower, change into clean clothes and get to the bus station. After a two-hour bus ride followed by a short pizza break, a two-hour shinkansen ride, two more train rides and a very, painful fifteen-walk back from the train station, I was finally home.

The next morning, I somehow managed to get out of bed and go to work. I was incredibly sore and it took me twenty minutes to get down the three flights of stairs in my apartment building, but I felt good. Heck, not just good, I felt triumphant! I practically skipped to work (well, this could have had something to do with the weird pain in the bottom of my right foot and less to do with a feeling of triumph). I had completed a marathon, a task I had never thought myself capable of three years ago, and I hadn’t died. In the immortal words of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” made popular by the hit movie, Rocky, I “had the guts, got the glory, went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop.”

Well, actually, I am going to stop… at least as far as the full marathon thing goes. I think once is enough for both me and my kneecaps. I’ll be sticking to 10K races and half marathons from here on out. My odds of dying are lot less, but my odds of getting a t-shirt and a piece of paper with my name on it are just as good!