Flashes of Panic

~8:30 AM, Fukuoka

I’m allowed to be scattered at this point, right? Google knows where I am, anyway.

I have made contact with other Americans here for the meet—not with the U.S. team, but very involved in the sport. (I don’t want to name-drop, but I could.) A few minutes ago, we ran out (about ten minutes) to a smallish park in the middle of the city, around which there is a meticulously measured 2K loop (with restrooms conveniently located about every half-kilometer.) There’s a walking path, a “jogging” path, and a cycling path; the running path is marked every 100m, and is tartan-surfaced. That’s right, they have a 2K all-weather track laid out around a smallish lake.

I have the U.K. junior women’s team in rooms on either side of me.

Fukuoka has as much running tradition as any other city in Japan, and perhaps more by virtue of their marathon. During the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, the Fukuoka International Marathon was one of the three big international marathons at a time when international travel for marathons was difficult even for elite athletes. (The other two were Boston and Kosice, Czechoslovakia; I am, apparently, one of very few people of my generation who knows Kosice still exists.)

Like most Japanese marathons, Fukuoka is an invitational race only; there is no mass entry. (The Honolulu Marathon is, essentially, the only mass-participation Japanese marathon; it’s not surprising, therefore, that JAL is a sponsor. This is changing: there are rumors that there will be a Tokyo Marathon which will be a mass-participation and elite marathon on the lines of the Big Five.) In the 60s and 70s, Fukuoka was the de facto World Championship marathon, and part of Frank Shorter’s claim to fame is that he won in Fukuoka as well as in Munich. You’ll find Fukuoka a few times in the American record progression for the marathon, I think.

Later this morning, I’m planning on going over to the train station, where supposedly the footprints of all the marathon winners are placed in the sidewalk like a walk of fame. I won’t find the footprints of my former boss there, but he ran his PR here: 2:14:29 in 1968, the year he won Boston.

Now Playing: The Phoenix from I’m a Mountain by Sarah Harmer