My Running Story and More!: February 2015

Monday, February 9, 2015

I'm a Marathoner!!! Osaka Marathon 2014, Japan, how it all came about.

Photo from https://www.osaka-marathon.com/index_en.html

That's right, I did it, I'm officially a Marathoner! I cannot believe that I actually did it! I'll tell you all about it, hope you enjoy my journey to Osaka and back.

Why Japan? Why Osaka? You might ask. Let me tell you. If you have read my previous blogs, about a year ago I wrote a blog post about what will be next for me and running. I wrote that I wanted to run a marathon, but not any marathon, I wanted my first to be special ;)

Honestly the only race I had planned to run in 2014 was the Lululemon SeaWheeze half marathon in Vancouver, Canada. We had planned a family vacation to Japan, we had been there in 2009 when my son was one and we loved it so much that we decided to go back and go to some new places as well as re-visit Tokyo. One day my husband asks why I haven't been running and I told him that I didn't have any races coming up in the near future and it was too early to start training for SeaWheeze. He immediately gets on his iPad and says to me, if he finds a race in Japan, would I run it and immediately I said, in a heart beat. Sure enough he pulls up the major Marathons in Japan, there was going to be one on October 26, 2014, the day before we were going to be flying back to the US. We could definitely make it work so we can get to the race and still on time back to Tokyo for the next day to come home. So it was all planned out. Until...

The registration for the race opened in April, however due to an overwhelming popularity of races in Japan, it was a lottery. I didn't know if I was even able to get in, so I got a little discouraged and didn't start training, what's the point, my chances of getting in were pretty slim. They had reached their maximum capacity of 28,000 entires within the first 24 hours. Then I read somewhere that the first year that this race took place in 2011, there were 154,000 entries and for the Tokyo Marathon there were over 320,000 entries, well you do the math for the odds. There was a separate registration process for international racers and the entry fee was more, 12,000 yen VS 10,000 for Japanese. But that was fine with me, I really didn't care, I just wanted to get in.

In the beginning of June I received an e-mail from the Osaka Marathon, but it was all in Japanese, I couldn't believe it, I copied and pasted the whole e-mail into Google translate, but man, I could not understand a sentence! Thankfully about 10 minutes later I received an e-mail with the following:

Mr./Ms. Keili Silverman
Check-in No: OM2014-0023721
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your recent application to enter the 4th Osaka Marathon.

Over the application period April 3 to May 8, 2014, substantially more responses were received than the number of places available. A strictly neutral drawing was therefore conducted and you were selected in that drawing.

Accordingly, you are invited to access the following payment URL and pay your entry fee and charges. Please note that if the payment procedure is not completed by the deadline below, your selection will be withdrawn.

OMG!!! YES! I got in, I could not believe it, now it was really crunch time, I needed to find a training plan and get started!

So that's my story of how it came about and there was no backing down now, I was not about to give up a very much coveted spot at this race.

Check out my other postings about the race review and Japan in general! Hope you enjoy.

Keep on running...

Keili

You can also check out my YouTube video about what I picked up at the Osaka Marathon Expo!

"The Expo", Osaka Marathon 2014

If you're interested in finding out about how this race came about, you can check out my previous blog post. This one will be about the Expo.

We arrived in Osaka from Fukuoka the morning of the last day of the expo, it was a Saturday, October 25th, 2014. We made it to our hotel around 11:00AM and unfortunately not able to check into our room yet. We left our luggage with the hotel and we decided to split up, I had planned to about 4 hours total for the expo, it was about a 30 minute train ride away from where we were staying. I wanted my husband and my son to enjoy the city and I also didn't want to be rushed through the expo, as it was my first race in Japan and I didn't know what to expect.

I talked to the concierge to find out exactly what train to take, where to switch trains and how to walk to the INTEX building. I love the subway system in Japan, it is the fastest and easiest way to get around, so that part was easy, but I was concerned about how to get from the train station to the INTEX building. The concierge told me to just follow the sea of people, I was going there the last day in the afternoon, I figured that most had already picked up their packets by the time I got there, so I was still skeptical.

Boy was she right and I wrong, it was literally a sea of people, the trains stop was the very last one of this train line, it was out in the boonies, in the same area as Universal Studios. Needless to say, it was no problem fining the place, and the very first thing I saw when I was approaching the building was the FINISH LINE! That was it, tomorrow at about the same time I was going to cross it no matter what.

The expo started out with picking up your bib and your race shirt, I had ordered a special charity t-shirt as well. For international racers we were required to bring a passport or two pieces of ID, they were very specific about that kind of ID's were needed. After I picked those up along with the race bag and the english version of the Osaka Marathon Guide, I headed to the next room where they only had a couple of vendors, that I picked up some freebies and that seemed to be it. Then I saw the arrows that pointed to outside and as I was trying to find my way back to leave, the arrows took me to another room, but this time it was three times as big as the first and filled with vendors, including their biggest sponsor Mizuno (big fan, by the way).

I picked up a bunch of stuff from here, I had a huge bag filled up. Seemed that the big thing to do there was to have professional photographers take your picture, that you can then retrieve by Facebook or their website. They were nice enough to have english translations of the marketing that shows you how to do that. I took advantage of most of those, I especially liked the Seiko one, where you gave them your estimated finish time and they took a photo with that. I didn't even come close to mine, but that's fine with me.

At the Mizuno area, they had us try on their shoes, this year they didn't have a limited edition Osaka Marathon shoe, which I was really disappointed by, however if you bought a pair of shoes there, they monogrammed it for you, which was really cool. After trying on shoes they gave away nice fabric bracelets and a hand wrap that you can slide your estimated finish time into and it has all the break downs for pacing yourself, I thought that was really cool.

What I realized though is, that they love to give out freebies, but they make you work for it. One station was where they had us follow and exercise routine, the other was filling out paperwork (they skipped me since I didn't have a permanent address in Japan), then we had to try one running shoes and run a circle in them. Asahi was there, they were giving out non alcoholic beer, it was really good and it tasted just like the real thing.

I picked up a few things at the Mizuno store there, I got a little hand towel, pre/post race rain cover and very cool bib clips, I'll share them on a YouTube video, click on the link below to see how cool these things really are. They did have an official Osaka Marathon Store there, however by the time I got there, there were slip pickings, I picked up a button just for a memento.

You can check out my Expo Haul video on YouTube

Once I was done with the expo, they had a very nicely marked course to exit, but before you exit, there was a huge hall filled with food vendors, I mean HUGE. It smelled so good, but I was getting close to my four limit there and I didn't have much cash left over, the only place that took credit cards was the Mizuno store, cash only at the other booths.