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).

How did I get here?

In 2023, I ran my first marathon in 4:59; in 2024, I ran my second marathon in 3:46. I trained for just under four months for my first and just under five months for my second. The results are clear: a little bit of training, no matter where you start from, takes you a long way. In the first case, from couch to marathon; in the second case, a 1hr 13min improvement. I have never run competitively prior.

Now, I have been training for just over one year for my third marathon: the Berlin Marathon. This will be my first international race and the first one I will run with people that I know (shoutout to Jiahui, Jimmy, and Deb). For the non-marathon folks, the Berlin Marathon is an Abbot World Marathon Major (one of seven) and is considered one of the best courses in the world, attracting over 50,000 people in 2024 including the world’s most elite runners like Eliud Kipchoge. To say it’s a big event is an understatement.

Where am I today?

In the time between my second marathon and now, I have grown considerably as a runner in two ways:

The first way is that I’m faster. The same runs I did in the summer 2024 are now both faster pace and at a lower heart rate. In short, I’m more fit than I was one year ago.

The second way is that I have an entire village of supporters, both runners and non-runners. Roughly speaking, this group has grown from <10 people before marathon #2 to almost 50 people, many of who watch my progress daily and are anticipating the results of my attempt at running under 3:00. I also have a coach and this helps. This, unsurprisingly, elevates the sport of running above just yourself and allows you to do things you probably could never do yourself (or at least it would be a lot harder).

How did the race go?

Unfortunately, the race did not go well. I completed the race in 3:52:04, which is 6 minutes slower than my PB and ~40 minutes slower than I (and my coach) expected.

There were four major contributing factors:

1. The temperature was a blistering 79 F (26 C), where typical average temperatures range in the low 60s.
2. My body was battling a cold about ~4 days prior to the race that continued through the rest of my trip.
3. Overfueling during the race which caused stomach issues and cramping.
4. Mental pressure to perform well and eroding confidence throughout the race.

The first factor was uncontrollable. It was also the most significant.

The second factor was tricky because I had already taken many health precautions (wearing a mask, sleeping on the plane, eating foods I was used to, doing minimal site seeing, light running). So even in hindsight, there isn’t much I would have done differently.

The third factor is something I could have prevented and will improve for my next marathon with practice. For the first 10 miles, I was fueling 23g carbs every 20 minutes (2.5 miles). But after experiencing cramping, in part from my stomach not being used to taking that many carbs and from the excess water I was drinking to battle the heat, I changed my fueling strategy to 23g every 35 minutes after the 10 mile mark. This helped. In hindsight, the most I fueled during my longest 20 mile long run was ~45g carbs/hr, and I was trying to take 69g carbs/hr on race day. This was a big mistake.

The fourth factor requires some unpacking. As I mentioned earlier, I have made significant progress in my physical fitness. The data is clear that I am much fitter than when I ran my 2nd marathon. I ran a 1:32 half marathon in May on a hilly course with 900 ft of elevation (Berlin has only 400 ft over double the distance), which would have projected me to run a 3:20 marathon back in May. With four more months of training after that, I went into Berlin with a lot of confidence: I thought at worst I would run a 3:30, 3:15 on a good day, and 3:05 on a perfect day. I started out at a 3:20-3:25 pace and expected to feel strong in the first half, pick up the pace at the half way point, then finish strong in the last 10k, finishing around 3:15. My past two marathons have gone this way, and I expected Berlin to be the same.

However, as things started to go south, I wasn’t prepared for the drastic adjustments needed during the race due to the weather, my own body’s physical fatigue from the sickness, and the overfueling. Seeing the 3:30 pace group go by and then the 3:45 pace group killed my mental state. By the end, all I wanted to do was finish. Even now, writing this blog 3 weeks after the race, I still haven’t fully regained my confidence.

Race performance aside, the Berlin Marathon is a legendary race. I’m grateful to have run it with three good friends, to have friends come out from the US and UK to support me, as well as having the support of all of my family and friends back home. This was by far the hardest race I’ve run (the first 10/10 difficulty run on my Garmin), and I couldn’t have done it without their support. As I start running again and begin to prepare for the Toyko Marathon next spring, I will be focusing on improving my fueling strategy and preparing myself for anything to happen on race day.

See you at the start line in Toyko!

Peace, Newton