Tokyo Marathon 2012 Runners

Today was one of the most important sporting events of the year here in Tokyo – the Tokyo Marathon! These last few years the whole country has been in a marathon craze and the event just gets more and more popular! Not only are the people running putting all their effort into it, but also a lot of people going there just to support the runners are giving their best. Certainly I myself have never been interested in long distance running before but it is just contagious, and today was great fun to watch the thousands and thousands of people running past. I picked the spot just after Ichigaya station to see the race. In part because it was just about 5km from the start so I figured people would look a little bit fresher for my photos, but also because there is a long stretch of straight road there with no tall buildings to cast shadows over the runners – a good place to take photos! I noticed that the average age of the runners were high, I saw a lot more people in their 60s and 70s than I saw people in their 20s. There was also a few ladies running with full make up looking much more fresh than I did and all I did was stand around! Amazing. I didn’t see much of the first one hundred runners, but among the general bulk of runners there were also quite a few foreigners, a Taiwanese girl had her flag and camera at the ready. As usual there were a lot of runners in costumes, here’s two of the more “plain” costumes, the Tokyo Tower and Pikachu. I’ll post some other costumed runners later tonight! There were also police all over the place to make sure that traffic ran smoothly despite the marathon, including these two very cool motorcycle police guarding a road accessing the main marathon route. I don’t think I could ever run a marathon, but I really respect those who do. This was my first time to photograph a long distance race, so I hope I’ll get better pictures next year!