TOKYO MARATHON 2025

FRANCE SAINT-DENIS COMPLETES TOKYO EARNING THE ABBOTT WORLD MAJOR MARATHON MEDAL!

A HUGE congratulations goes out to France for earning this prestigious medal! An amazing accomplishment from an incredible long time athlete. Here is her race report:

Race Report from the Tokyo Marathon
March 2, 2025
by: France Saint-Denis

The Tokyo Marathon was my 12th marathon (one more if you count my Ironman). But what mattered was completing the 6th Abbott World Marathon Majors, which gave me the Abbott medal, aka « the pie,» a big piece of hardware displaying the medals of the six majors: Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin, London and Tokyo.

But damn, it was hot! The 21°C ​​seemed like 31°C for me, who trained in the winter wonderland! To make things worse, they started running out of water for the second half of the marathon. Let me explain. During the race, you had to go to the table matching the last number of your bib for food or drink. There was table 1-2, table 3-4, table 4-5, table 5-6, table 7-8, and table 9-0. So, at the beginning, it was pretty fluid; people stopped at their tables, but when half the tables were empty, it started to get crowded. And for the last 5 km, there was nothing left to drink!  Considering how much I suffered from the heat, it's still good that I only did five minutes more for my second half.

Apart from that, everything was well organized, including the toilets before the race (I didn't stop during!) and how to direct you to get the bag of clothes afterward. After the race, they give you a bag. You pick up a mini bottle of water, an aluminum foil pouch of food written in Japanese that I haven't dared to eat yet, a bottle of body wash(?), aluminum foil (that I haven't used), and an adorable short-sleeved towel dress with a hood, with the marathon logo. It's very nice. There is no real lunch.

Tips:

• Google Maps is a charm for walking, taking the train or the subway. You need a data plan (Airalo or other), a power bank, and a converter (Canada 120 volts, 60 Hrz - Tokyo 100 volts, 50 Hrz). You use a lot of batteries using Google Maps or Google Translate. They don’t speak English or only a few words outside hotels and tourist information.  Most food or beverage packaging is only in Japanese.
• It isn't easy to get to the start (your assigned entry Gate), so I planned to do a walk-through before race day.
• Don’t expect to buy the race jacket at the Expo if you are not ready to wait hours in line.
• The "cutoffs" all along the course are based on the gun time and not your real-time. So those who are in Corral K start half an hour late! I was in group G and crossed the starting line at 9:28 when the start was at 9:10.
• Bring a facecloth to dry your hands after washing them. They are very ecological! There is no hand paper (rarely a hand dryer) in public or restaurant washrooms.