After the Toyko Marathon, I reflect on my running journey.

Post Berlin

There were exactly 161 days between the Berlin Marathon and the Toyko Marathon. If you read my previous post about the Berlin Marathon, you will know that I underperformed and struggled to return to running.

This is not the first time I have tried to run the Tokyo Marathon. I entered the lottery for Toyko in 2024 to no avail. This year, I entered under the One Toyko Global membership, which gave me an additional entry (#paytowin), and in mid-October, I was lucky enough to get the ballot. My friends Jiahui and Lin Lin did not receive entry ballots. However, Jiahui got off the waitlist in November (which changed her skiing plans in Niseko). It seems that our marathon journeys have been intertwined, both of us racing for our second star in Toyko (we both got our first star in Berlin).

After Berlin, I was looking for a redemption race but didn’t expect it so soon. Even though I found out about Toyko in October, the truth is that I never quite found my stride during this build. Having already made plans in February to spend time in Thailand, I knew going into this race that I would be undertrained. But, I hoped to least maintain some of fitness from the big build up to Berlin from last year.

Shift in Mentality

I approached this marathon with a different mentality than Berlin. Rather than placing high expectations to perform, I swung the pendulum to the other side: I would go in without a time goal (in reality, it was just a very conservative time goal), I would be OK with finishing my training ~3 weeks before the race, and I would be prepared for any kind of weather, sickness, or health condition on the day of the race.

The Build

When I started to build up a base again, I began to experiment with a few things.

I began to record and post running content to TikTok as a way of capturing my journey as a runner. I kept this up for about a month. Although it was fun and I found myself enjoying some aspects of it, I don’t think this is for me. I love taking pictures and videos (I occasionally make vlogs of my travels on YouTube), but something about running and vlogging didn’t seem to mix well with me. There was pressure to record my runs, worrying about gaining followers, and removing the tranquility that makes running so special for me. I much prefer writing a blog every once in a while, and that once-in-a-while model doesn’t work well for content creation. I can best summarize it by saying that although my thoughts are full when I run, I don’t think that recording myself is conducive to very good ones.

On the topic of tranquility, I also experimented with running with music. Before Berlin, I never ran with music, even since my earliest days of training for marathon #1 in 2023. That would be 2.5 years of silent runs and just me with my thoughts. This block, I bought Shockz headphones and the Meta Oakley Vanguard sunglasses (which record video, take pictures, and play music!). My playlist consisted mostly of drum and bass with a 170-180 BPM, including a large amount of Sub Focus. Over many months, I curated my running playlist and learned the flow of the songs. Like movements in a symphony, groupings of songs helped give me cues as to how long I had been running and gave me the extra boost I needed, which I used to my advantage on longer runs and during the marathon itself. Exploring a new genre of music and playing the running meta-game was a lot of fun. Music helped keep my desired cadence and on days where I needed the boost, it could really fire me up. However, it also seemed to make my runs feel less memorable and artifically change my mood, sometimes for better but sometimes for the worse. I am a classically trained musician, so my ears are particularly attuned to music and its effects. Overall, I think I lost something (tranquility, peace, space for my own thoughts?) when I started running with music - and so I don’t think I will run or race with music much anymore.

The Fourth Marathon

I ran a personal best with an official chip time of 3:32:17. This is a 14 minute improvement over my previous personal best of 3:46:09, which I ran during the Jack and Jill Marathon in July 2024. To add color to this previous personal best, I ran that race with 2000+ feet of de-elevation. I learned that I am extremely good on downhill courses, but even on courses with both elevation and de-elevation, I generally perform quite well. Toyko is generally quite flat, so my PR is quite a lot better when comparing the Grade Adjusted Pace to Jack and Jill.

My strategy was simple and harkens back to the same strategy I used in Jack and Jill:

  1. Run the first 13.1 miles easy (this was 8:00 min/mile). Ideally, this is just below my lactate threshold heart rate, which is ~165 BPM. Normally, my energy levels are high, so this feels no harder than a slightly faster long run, even though the pace is much faster than a long run. This is to build confidence and set myself up for a negative split in the second half.
  2. Build the next 6 mile and lock into a runner ahead that is running at a pace that is just above what feels comfortable. For me, this was right around 7:35 min/mile. I passed people and it felt good.
  3. Race the last 6 miles, knowing that I will in reality be running more like 26.5-26.8 miles with all the inefficient turns during the course. This is hard, no matter how fast you are, but it’s easier if you’re well trained and have fueled well.

For the most part, things went according to plan. I let the 3:30 pacers go ahead of me in the first half of the race but I eventually caught up to them in the second half, maintained with them for a while, then fell behind at the end. The last three miles were excruciatingly difficult, where I went from 7:35 min/mile to around 8:30 min/mile. Of course, this is the infamous wall. It comes at a different point for each race I’ve done and on that day it was at 24 miles.

Other things that didn’t go my way are that I got sick AGAIN. On Thursday on the week of the race, I started getting a stuffy nose and signs of a cold. I had been healthy all throughout the last two weeks. This is the second time this has happened, and I’m no stranger to getting sick during traveling or right after returning home, especially on international trips. I think it’s because my life when traveling is so different to when I’m at home: I’m always on the move, I’m eating different foods, and if I’m being honest, I’m likely stressed about the race. Despite knowing that I’d be running this race “for fun”, I can never really get the race mentality out of my head.

There was also a heat warning (again) for the Toyko Marathon. Thankfully, it was only 62F/16C, which is warm but not insanely warm like it was in Berlin (79F/26C). Had it been cooler like it normally would be (~50F) and with a healthy body, I’m positive that I could have performed better, perhaps 15 seconds faster per mile and also not died the last three miles.

My takeaways from this race are:

  • Bring a little more fire to the training and race day. I think I swung too far towards the “fun run” mentality, and I want to push myself to be better.
  • Expect that training over the holidays will be hard and the races at the beginning of the year are hard.
  • Know exactly what the plan will be months before the race. This means knowing what pace I can expect.
  • Although my strategy seems reasonable, I think I could likely smooth out the pacing more evenly.
  • Don’t line up in the corrals until the absolute last moment so that I can use the bathroom as close to the start time as possible. I had to use the bathroom the first few miles and lost about one to two minutes. I’m going to get nervous, so better to squeeze back into the corral than lose one to two minutes during the race to use the bathroom.
  • Arrive early, like at least 2 hours before the race starts. It helps to be situated early and find a nice place to sit before the race.
  • Do even less walking leading up to the race. I’m talking not just the day before but up to three days before. It’s hard when the trip is international because I want to go out and do things but if I really want to perform well, I need to stay off my legs. It’s easy for fatigue to build up from just walking around.
  • Schedule something relaxing after the race. In Berlin, it was the Balinese spa; in Toyko, it was the onsen. Both were great.
  • Do not get sick. I know it’ll probably happen again but one can pray and try to take even more precautions.

2026 is just getting started. I, as well as Jiahui and Lin Lin, received ballots to run the Valencia Marathon in December. I expect around 3:15 but depending on how well the training goes, I wonder if this could be my first real attempt at sub-3:00. It’s good to set the bar high.

I’ll see you at the start line in Valencia!

P.S. I joined a run club in Toyko called Namban Rengo, which ended up being one of the highlights of my trip. Shoutout to them and the many of them that also ran the Toyko Marathon. Run aside, Toyko is one of my favorite cities. I spent about eight days in Shibuya and eight days in Ginza. When I return to Toyko, I’ll be sure to join their workouts (and of course, do more shopping).