I plan on running the Capital City Half Marathon in Columbus on Saturday. It’s a pretty big deal here in Columbus, and many participants in the Premier Sports Marathoner in Training (MIT) group have been training for it. I’ve been maintaining just enough fitness to be able to finish the race, but after Saturday, I plan to shut things down for a little while. My left ankle and my right shoulder are still sore, so I want to give my body some time to rest. I’m not going to be running a full marathon in the fall – I expect my next marathon to be the 2010 Boston Marathon in April of next year. In fact, I’ve already filled out and sent in the hotel reservation form. Hotels sell out fast, so it’s best to be early.

Tags: marathon, marathons, Boston Marathon, Capital City Half Marathon, running

The 2009 Boston Marathon was yesterday, and the United States did very well. Ryan Hall finished in third place for the men, and Kara Goucher finished in third place for the women. That’s the best the United States has done in a very long time. Both Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher are still very young, so they have a lot of years ahead of them to improve on this year. This was the first Boston Marathon for each of them. Speaking of the Boston Marathon, I’m not sure whether or not it was because of the e-mail I sent, but the Tokyo Marathon just posted chip times today. The absolute cut-off time for me to qualify for the 2010 Boston Marathon was 3:15:59, and my chip time was 3:15:41. Therefore, I qualified with eighteen seconds to spare!

Tags: marathon, marathons, Tokyo Marathon, Boston Marathon, running

Yesterday I saw the movie Timecrimes at the Drexel. It has to do with time travel, and it kind of made my head spin until I went home and drew a timeline. I think I figured it out. Speaking of movies, next week Tokyo! opens at the Drexel. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that, especially since I was just there a few weeks ago. In addition, starting in May, there’s a Japanese film series at the Wexner Center for the Arts. It looks like there are a total of eleven films showing. I don’t think I’m going to be able to see all of them, but I’d certainly like to make it down there to see at least a few.

Tags: Timecrimes, Tokyo!, Wexner Center for the Arts, Wexner Center, Drexel Theaters, Drexel

Here is an e-mail I just sent to the Boston Marathon:

From: timtrowbridge@hotmail.com
To: info@baa.org
Subject: Tokyo Marathon
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:17:24 +0000

Hello,
I'm a 38-year-old male, and my Boston Marathon qualifying time is 3:15. A few weeks ago, I ran the 2009 Tokyo Marathon (http://www.tokyo42195.org/). It was a great experience. On the Tokyo Marathon's website, they immediately posted the unofficial gun times. (It definitely appears the time to the start line has not been taken out, as the marathon began at precisely 9:10 AM.) Here is my unofficial gun time:

http://p.tokyo42195.org/numberfile/23984.html

At the finish, my watch said 3:15, so I believe I qualified for the 2010 Boston Marathon. I've been waiting patiently for them to post the official chip times, but so far they haven't done it. Just out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the websites for the previous two Tokyo Marathons. (This was only the third Tokyo Marathon, and they have separate websites for each one.) To my surprise, it appears that the official chip times were never posted for these marathons.

I'm a little confused as to what to do. There doesn't even appear to be any contact information on the 2009 Tokyo Marathon's website, and nobody seems to know if/when we can access our official chip times. Do you have any advice on what to do, or are you able to contact the Tokyo Marathon directly to find out about official chip times?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Tim Trowbridge

Tags: marathon, marathons, Tokyo Marathon, Boston Marathon, running

I just heard an interesting story on NPR called, “Staying Fit After Marathon Days Are Over.” Click here to read the story and here to listen. It has some good points, but the thing that many runners wouldn’t like about it is that it perpetuates the misconception that long-distance running will inevitably mess up your knees. One of the main themes of the story seems to be that running a bunch of marathons was not good for this man’s body, but what they really didn’t talk about is how his body would have been had he not run all those marathons. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been any better off, and he very well may have been worse off. It also said that he took no days off – if he had, he may have been able to avoid the problems with his knees.

Tags: marathon, marathons, National Public Radio, NPR, running

Previously I reported that my unofficial time in the Tokyo Marathon was 3:17:21. That’s true, but I think some clarification is in order. Marathons usually report two times: gun time and chip time. Gun time is the time from when the starting gun fires until the runner crosses the finish line. Chip time, on the other hand, is the time from when the runner crosses the starting line until the runner crosses the finish line. In big marathons (such as the Tokyo Marathon), there can be a significant difference between gun time and chip time, because it takes a while to get to the starting line, since it’s so crowded.

Usually, when a runner talks about his or her marathon time, he/she refers to chip time, and this is his/her official time. My unofficial time in the Tokyo Marathon of 3:17:21 was actually my gun time. As for my chip time, believe it or not, I’m still not sure what it was. For some reason, I’ve heard that the Tokyo Marathon takes a couple weeks to report official (chip) times. When I crossed the finish line, my watch said 3:15, so I believe that this was my chip time. We’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully, I’ll find out soon!

Tags: marathon, marathons, Tokyo Marathon, running