Continuing in my series of the World Marathon Majors, the next one for me to do (and the first one this year) is Tokyo.
The course profile – fast and flat with the first 5k downhill.
I found a great VR recap of last years running:
The whole thing is over 3.5 hours long, but what is really valuable is that it is distant stamped by the runner as he moves through the race. As is always the case on a marathon, you run slightly further than your watch records, so as he gets deeper into the run he has run slightly further than the KM markers on the course. I went to 10/20/30 and 41k to take a look at what was there – here are the time stamps:
- 10km – 51mins 40 secs, takes you to 9.7km
- 20km – 1h 39m 17s, takes you to 19.7km
- 30k – 2h 28m 31s, takes you to 29.6km
- Watch from 3h 41m 32s until the end to get a feel for the last KM.
Something else I noticed was that for long stretches that you are running alongside runners in the opposite direction, on the other side of the road- stretch around 10k, from around 11k until 32k, then from around 34k to 41k. This is different to most of the other big city marathons (London has some of this around Tower Bridge down the Highway towards Docklands)
Water – There are 15 water stations, 5/7/10/12/15/17/20/22/25/27/30/32/35/38/40. (from the handbook p.20)
Weather for Sunday looks good, cool with maybe some rain (which if light will be welcome in the latter stages as it will be cooling. BBC weather forecast here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/1850147
