Co-Authored by Kelly Greene and Chris Cutler
Kelly Greene and Chris Cutler recently completed the Tokyo Marathon; Karen Preli asked Kelly if she’d write up a race report. Many weeks and words later, she put together this post and asked Chris to add to it. We hope it inspires you to run Tokyo, or somewhere else that seems exotic and far away.
Kelly: Way back in September 2024, I was scrolling through Facebook when a post from Chris Cutler popped up: He had just gotten into the Tokyo marathon!
Chris: It was an absolute fluke! My luck is abysmal when it comes to marathon lotteries, so when I received the email stating that I had been selected to participate in the 2025 Tokyo Marathon, I was gobsmacked! I literally went over the email five times to make sure I was reading it correctly!
Kelly: I had recently found out that I was in, too, through one of the additional lotteries available to runners who have completed at least four World Majors. I was in no way ready, because I hadn’t run a marathon since 2021. But knowing that my fellow high school classmate and TCTC member would be running it, too, gave me the confidence to go ahead. Chris and I had reconnected in 2017 at the Boston marathon, thanks to Garry and Penny Russ and TCTC! (I was living in NYC at the time but would glom onto runs with the Messiah Moravian meet-up on trips back home.) I highly recommend signing up for any race that Chris runs, by the way, so you can benefit from the extensive research that he generously shares!
Chris: Hey, half the fun of travel for me is in the planning. I didn’t know if I’d ever return to Japan again, so I felt like I needed to make the most of my time there. I’ve now fallen in love with the country, its friendly people and rich culture, so I foresee another visit in my future.
Kelly: On to Tokyo: The flight is no joke at 14.5 hours. And Tokyo is sparkly clean and well organized, but it takes a minute to adjust to a place where very few signs are in English. But Tokyo is so logical that even after 22 hours of travel, Chris and I each independently found our way to the subway and the hotel, in the Tsukiji (pronounced Ski-gee) district, just past the well-known shopping neighborhood of Ginza where the marathon ends. We originally chose a different hotel a little closer to the finish that a friend had recommended, but Chris figured out that the beds there were only five feet long and the rooms were TINY! You’ve seen Chris. He had concerns. I would recommend the hotel where we stayed instead, Mitsui Garden Hotel Ginza Tsukiji. The rooms were still small but somehow had a washer/dryer, bigger-than-dorm-size fridge and freezer, and the toilet — Chris will have to fill you in on that!
Chris: I don’t want to go into too much detail on this topic, but once you experience (and learn all the options) of a Japanese bidet, you may never want to go back to plain, basic porcelain again. Don’t even get me started on the heated seat!
Kelly: Also… Mitsui Garden has a hotel robot that delivers things to your room. You get a call that the robot is outside your door, punch in your room number to a keypad, and a drawer opens. You take your item, the drawer closes, and the robot goes back down the hall toward the elevator. Chris has a fantastic video you must see.
Chris: Kelly clued me in on this cool feature of our hotel. I absolutely had to experience it for myself.
Kelly: Chris arrived on the Tuesday afternoon before the Sunday marathon; I got there that Wednesday. We quickly decided that there was no way we were going to PR, given the time difference messing with our sleep, various training hurdles we each separately encountered, and our desire to see everything on a new continent to us. So, we walked a lot – about 30,000 steps a day, including our shake-out runs. Not ideal for marathon performance, but appropriate just this once. This was my 10th marathon, and Chris’s bazillionth.
Chris: That’s hyperbole – it’s actually more like 30.
Kelly: We started Thursday with a shake-out run around the Imperial Palace and ran four miles instead of three after realizing that running outside the moat meant we wouldn’t get a glimpse of the palace itself. We walked the last part back, stopping to find our names on the Seiko store’s marathon display windows.
Next up: Breakfast at the hotel, which included freshly grilled fish, congee and shrimp spring rolls, along with salad, croissants, freshly made yogurt and smoothies and French toast. We have so many restaurant recommendations for when you go, including some phenomenal ramen holes-in-the-wall.
Chris: Too many great options for food in Japan to cover them all here, including convenience stores which are in a category all to themselves!
Kelly: From there we hit the expo. As with so many races, that meant a trip to a humongous convention center, complete with palm trees. This one was a bus ride toward the bay and a man-made beach. The bib and shirt lines ran fairly efficiently for us, about noontime on the expo’s first day. One note: You have to order and pay for the finisher’s shirt in advance, separately from your marathon entry. The singlets sold out instantly. Also, Westerners typically need to order at least one size bigger than usual. There are Facebook groups with many, many posts full of advice and discussion of all this.
Onto the vendors, who are on a separate floor: We didn’t even try to buy any official Asics merch, as the line just to get into the shopping area was 240 minutes long. For whatever reason, Asics apparently never produces enough Tokyo marathon clothing to meet the demand. We opted not even to try, picking up some fun marathon socks and hats instead.
We saw many other fantastic sites in Tokyo, including watching the sunset from the roof of a skyscraper and the lights come on at the famous Shibuya Scramble crossing. We also took a day trip on Friday to Kamakura, a neighboring medieval coastal town, to see a giant Buddha from the 15th century, shrines, temples and the sun set behind Mount Fuji while beating the crowds. Upon our return to Tokyo, we pulled off at a restaurant serving all kinds of fresh Japanese oysters. You can eat them raw or cook them at the table, hot pot style. Chris wisely cooked all of his. I ate one raw oyster (as the owner’s wife said was fine to do). And… big mistake. I was up all night with food poisoning.
Chris: Raw oysters are not my thing, but it was really unfortunate that Kelly had this happen before the marathon. I went on the hunt the next morning for a few things that were easy on the stomach.
Kelly: Chris was my banana-bearing hero! That Saturday, I managed our easy two-mile shakeout run, choked down a little oatmeal and banana (I always bring a few baggies with oatmeal from home), and a trip to the marathon starting line. We had been advised by friends and Facebook to go the day before to make sure we understood how to navigate once we arrived at Shinjuku station, one of the largest, if not THE largest, subway stations in the world. It has more than 200 exits. I lived in NYC for 15 years, and Shinjuku station felt about 10 times larger than Grand Central Station. Still, the signs were so good that we figured it out pretty easily, thank goodness. I sent Chris off to explore and returned to Tsukiji to find more bland provisions and rest.
Chris: This is absolutely the truth! The major train stations, Shinjuku and Toyko Station, are incredibly large, filled with people and outright daunting. All public transportation is accessible in these stations – local and high-speed trains, multiple subway lines, and buses. Plus, they also have literal shopping malls inside, which just compounds the people and confusion! Thank goodness for detailed signage and Google Maps!
Kelly: What you need to know about the race itself: The course is very flat, and what makes it fun is the crowd, not the course itself. There are lots of out-and-backs. The buildings are greige and uniform, with a few exceptions, like Tokyo Tower. You’re in it for the symphony orchestra playing at 9 a.m. The pack of Marios offering to power you up. The many signs in English politely lettered with: “Nice run!” The tiny cheerleaders forming 20-girl-strong human pyramids and cheering you on in their high-pitched tween voices. The gigantic drums playing ancient rhythms.
Chris: I wasn’t expecting such a great spectator turnout, but the locals came out in droves. I, too, was surprised that people were holding signs in English. Many said “Fight!”, rather than “Run!”, which I found interesting, like the marathon was a formidable foe to be conquered, which it really is!
Kelly: Also important: You can’t carry your own water. Not even into the starting area. Practice with Pocari Sweat beforehand (the Japanese version of an electrolyte drink), if you can. And you are assigned to drink tables based on the last number on your bib. And it can get hot. The temperature reached nearly 70 degrees F this year. Runners were grabbing so much more water than expected that many stations ran out of cups, starting about a third of the way into the race.
Chris: I lived on the wild side and tried almost everything at the aid stations. Pocari Sweat (despite the odd name) isn’t half bad. In addition, there was fruit, red bean candies and squeeze pouches filled with some kind of pureed banana, most likely with added electrolytes. The temps were rising rapidly from the start and a lot of the course was without shade. The fact that many of the water stops were running out of fluids was highly unusual, with the planning that is typical to this race and its meticulous Japanese organizers.
Kelly: And the race has a rolling start. All 36,000 runners have started within 30 minutes-ish of the gun time. That means it takes about 5K just to spread out a bit. And you never lose the feeling that you’re running in a crowd. Bringing us to another important point: Runners here pass on the right, not the left. If you slow down or walk, you go to the left instead of the right.
So how did the food poisoning and too much walking in the days beforehand work out? For the first half of the race, I thought I would miraculously not be affected. By about mile 15, though, my stomach started to feel a little off. I stopped at a portapotty (very clean, many volunteers, but 90 meters off the course!), which I had only done in one other marathon, where it made all the difference. This time around, no such luck. I continued to feel off, so I told myself, “If I just have to throw up, it’s OK. Just get it over with and keep going.” And then I saw someone else throw up — and a race official pulled him off the course. I couldn’t tell if the runner was disqualified or being taken to the medical tent. Either way, I decided I had to avoid throwing up at all costs, because it would increase the odds of a DNF.
I made it to mile 20, at which point I started taking walking breaks to avoid throwing up. This strategy destroyed my splits — but it got me across the finish line. And now I have my fifth star, which I celebrated with Chris over a meal of amazing sushi. Onto Berlin (hopefully in 2026. Want to run it with me?)!
Chris: My marathon went similar to Kelly’s, just without the nausea. I had an extra 30,000 steps under my belt for the week since I started my sightseeing a day before Kelly. So, this, combined with the heat, had me doing a walk/run starting at mile 20. Amazingly, we both finished within 60-90 seconds of each other, despite starting in different corrals. The finish line area is split into two different chutes, based on your assigned bib color, to receive your medal, food, and the coveted Tokyo Marathon hooded, terry cloth poncho. Due to this, I ended up walking an additional mile to find Kelly as we were assigned in different directions (of course).
Kelly: In addition to all of the incredible help and moral support that Chris provided on the spot, I have to give a shout out to Coach Donnie for helping me pivot from training for two half marathons last fall to Tokyo this winter; to Cheryl, Justin and their Breakthrough PT team for helping me work through two adductor strains; to the strong women of FiA for encouraging me to go for it and joining me for many intervals at that 0-dark-30 time when overcommitted moms tend to run; and to my Crazy Running Saturday buddies for pushing me out of my comfort zone.
We enjoy a wonderful running community, y’all. Thank you!
Chris: Agreed! We are immensely fortunate to live in a city that has a vibrant and supportive running community! Many thanks to Kelly for doing the heavy lifting on this race report, as well as being a patient travel companion for my exhaustive (and exhausting) exploration of Tokyo pre-marathon.
Kelly: Anytime! Berlin 2026?
Chris: Count me in! May the odds be in our favor!