Tokyo Marathon 10k

I woke up on Sunday morning before the Tokyo 10k focused on one thing - fighting my way through the crowd of runners at the starting line to get a good position.  I was assigned the "B" block. When teammates Keren and Frank and I arrived in the B corral 35 minutes before the starting gun we could barely make out the starting white block off in the distance, with the thousands of runners packed in front of us (see picture).  We tried to be as polite as possible as we wound through the crowd, and maneuvered our way to a spot within only 10 meters of the starting line.  We had done it!  Frank and I congratulated each other on our accomplishment - "otsukare sama".

When the starting gun did go off it struck me that I still needed to actually run the damn race.  Being so close to the front meant I went out like a bat out of hell.  I felt tired almost immediately, and struggled in the wind. 

I spotted a pack of runners with one guy wearing "pace runner" on his back and tucked in behind them.  I discovered the pack was surrounding Harumi Hiroyama, the second seeded Japanese female marathoner.  It turns out she was running 3:29 per kilometer pace and I dutifully (and stupidly) followed.  I knew almost immediately I would be in trouble and could not maintain the pace.  But much of the first 6k was downhill so I just hung on as long as I could.  My 5k split was 17:22, 6k was 20:51.

The last 3k into the wind was an ordeal. Once the 10k and marathon groups split there was suddenly no other runners near me.  I staggered home in 36:22.

36:22 is an acceptable time for me - it is about what I ran in my last three 10ks, but it was hardly spectacular.  However the effort was good for 7th place out of 5,000 runners.  The crowd and volunteers cheered me at the end like I was a famous star.  It was all rather glorious, and I felt that the effort to get to the front at the starting line did pay off.