Tokyo Elite Marathon Cutoff Bus

Four of my teammates are among the several hundred women to qualify for the prestigious Tokyo Ladies Marathon yesterday, and I joined the throngs lining the course to cheer them on. Japan is a rabid marathon culture and thousands of people stand for hours in freezing rain to see the runners pass by twice on the out-and-back course. Tokyo weather is usually quite benign in November, and the cold temperatures come as a shock after the mild autumn. While us spectators are mildly uncomfortable, the marathon runners endure steadily increasing rain and then a terribly unkind headwind and uphill climb on the return stretch.

I watch the marathon at the 30k mark and most all of the runners faces are contorted with pain as they stare ahead toward the heartbreak hill. But the really frightening thing is looming behind them. The bitterly cruel fact of this elite marathon is that if the runners fail to maintain a fast 3:30:00 finishing time pace through various cutoff points, the race officials will pull them off the course and deposit them on the sweeper buses trailing the field. After months of training and 40-kilometers of pain, they could be pulled off the course and denied the chance to finish the event! Runner after runner passes me each looking more nervous. Three of my Namban teammates pass safely, though Mika K does not have a large cushion over the cutoff time. Then in the distance I see them. It is an ominous sight, worse than any horror movie, the buses bearing down with their lights piercing the rain drops.

An advance official in a car tries to persuade the last woman to stop running and get on the bus, but she gamely presses on despite the apparent futility of beating the time at the next cutoff mark.

Then I watch the bus pass. The bus is filled with wet and exhausted and disheveled runners swaddled in huge blankets. They are paraded slowly along the race course, all of them staring downward, eyes averted from the crowd, looking far more sad and forlorn than if they were a group of prisoners being taken away to a guillotine to be executed.

I am outraged and ready to organize a loud protest of this horribly merciless practice of cutting runners off, but then when I ask the participants what they think of this heartless standard, they shrug it off an integral aspect of the event. It is the tough standard that make it a truly "elite" event wherever finisher can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Olympic Gold medal winner. The harsh cutoff makes the accomplishment of finishing that much sweeter.