Tokyo Marathon 2024. This was on my calendar for at least 7 months as the 6th and final of the marathon majors to obtain for the special Abbot World Marathon Major's Six Star Medal. As with a lot of things in life, the best laid plans sometimes do not come together as hoped. An injury to my left hip in late January and a severe (non-covid) virus flummoxed my cardiac/heart rate as it has with a number of people post-virus to where and easy effort run, is now a steady state effort, and a steady state effort is hard, and hard is not possible. The average recovery from this malaise is 79 days...and I am only about 30 days post virus. Anyway, with as difficult and expensive it is to get into the Tokyo race, I decided to do this race only to complete the task, being fully aware that it would be a physcially challenging and miserable experience. I knew my time would be considerably slower than my average efforts, but that was ok as long as I finished.
Well, the race went about as I had expected, unfortunately. Richie made the trip with his family and with his friend Johnny who works with him. Richie had not been focused on training in the last few weeks and so was onboard with running with me however slowly that would be. We ran together for the first half of the race. Each time my HR would exceed 150 my Garmin alarm would sound and I would slow my pace to get it back down. The challenge was real from the first 100 meters, where it was already at 144. We were able to run mid 9 min to 10 min pace for the first 8 miles or so, but as the temps got warmer, and the bright sunshine started to dehydrate me, my HR began to get out of my control. 160 is my aerobic threshold, and I had no interest in allow myself to go down that path for a sure bonk.
At around the 8 mile mark Richie noted that my gait was looking off. He was not wrong. As the miles went on, my left hip strength seemed to fatigue to the point in which I as literally leaning sideways antalgically causing a severally wonky running form. I saw myself in my shadow with the sun at my back - and it was alarming. At around mile 12 Richie needed to use the restroom - but did not want to use the portajohns which were generally down alleyways away from the course by a few hundred yards- and instead he went into a restuarant. This is where we got split up. So from mile 12 to 22 with my heartrate not allowing me to run for more than about 300 meters without spiking to the mid 150s and my antaligic gait - I ticked through the miles solo just trying to get to the finish line.
Around mile 22 a guy named Rob came up to me and said hey, your going for the 6 star too? (we had special bib's on the backs of our shirts to identify us) - do you mind if I walk with you a bit? And so Rob from Chicago became my new friend as we walked in the last 4 miles of the event. He had a calf injury about 5 weeks ago that derailed his training and when he saw me walking with the strange lean he figured we could make the best of things by keeping each other company to the finish. By resorting to just walking - my lean straightend up - and my HR of course was at least not problematic and perhaps even helped clear out some lactate. We finished together, got our Six Star Medals did a photo together and bid each other farewell.
Richie finished ahead of me, and Johnny going for his first sub 4 marathon succeeded with a 3:53 in his 4th try.
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