Today is Jan 13th and Susan and I have a chance to sign up with Marathon Tours for the Tokyo Marathon. We had been signed up for the 2020 race but the COVID pandemic took care of this. I hadn’t intended to all the majors when I started running but soon got excited when I realized I had inadvertently run 3 of them. In 2014, Susan qualified for the Boston Marathon and I signed up as a charity runner. This was my first major and arguably the most difficult to get into. Susan went on to run Boston again in 2017 and I cheered her on under the Citgo sign at mile 25. I entered the lottery for the Chicago marathon in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020 and got into all the races. Chicago has been one of my favorite races to run but you still only get credit for running it once. Susan and I both ran the Berlin Marathon for Paws in 2017. This is another story as we ran Chicago two weeks after Berlin.
In 2019 we ran the London Marathon with Marathon tours and I had one of my best races since the Boston Marathon! It wasn’t my fastest but I did break through some mental barriers. It was also the most interesting marathon for watching runners in costumes. (post to come shortly!)
In a sneaky surprise, the day I learned I had not gotten into the New York Marathon, I over heard Susan talking to her friends at the run club that she had gotten into the NYC Marathon! I scrambled and ran the race for the charity Aktiv for Cancer.
That made 5 majors in 4 years and all we had to do was the Tokyo Marathon. As we started hearing about COVID it seemed unthinkable that they would cancel the race. Alas it happened
Hopefully a vaccine changes our course and we can attend this years 2021 Tokyo Marathon in Oct!