tokyo rift: seriously, 70 miles a week??

it’s official. i’m running the tokyo marathon in spring 2027.

i went the charity route, because apparently there were over 300,000 applicants for roughly 30,000 slots, which is an absurd ratio and not one i felt like gambling on. once i started looking at the charity options, though, it stopped feeling like a workaround and started feeling like the right path. i found a japanese charitable cause tied to juvenile diabetes, Japan IDDM , which meant something to me immediately. in my application, i wrote about billy, about what i saw that disease do to his life, and about wanting to do this in his honor. i liked adding the personal connection to make it not just a race i want to run, but one i actually have a reason to carry.

the target is sub-3. that’s the thing. that’s the standard. if i can get there, i would likely qualify for the boston marathon, a sentence i never dreamed i would say in 100 years. i’ll be 45 on race day, which makes this feel a lot less like some vague someday goal and a lot more like a real shot i need to take seriously.

coach barlow wants me building to 70 miles per week by the end of this fall, and i’ll be honest: that number makes me uneasy. 70 mpw is serious mileage. not “pretty good for a guy who runs a lot” mileage. real mileage. the kind that starts shaping your whole week around it, not simply fitting miles around your week. the kind that forces you to get honest about recovery, sleep, lifting, scheduling, and whether your body is actually built to handle the load.

that’s the open question for me right now. i’m 6’2”, usually somewhere around 195 depending on how active i’ve been and whether i’ve had a few beers. i honestly don’t know if i can absorb that much impact without something starting to go sideways. maybe i can adapt to it. maybe i can’t. but if sub-3 is the goal, i have to find out.

what complicates this is that i do not want to get smaller and weaker in the process.

that probably sounds obvious, but for me it runs deeper than vanity. i hit my peak weight in 2017 at 243 pounds. i still remember the day i bought size 38 pants without even pausing to think about what that said about where i was physically. i remember yelling at some of my closest friends for “letting” me get that big, and they all said the same thing: they saw me so often they didn’t really notice it happening. also, i know it wasn't their fault. it was my own. apparently i carried it better than i thought. but seeing photos from that time, i didn’t feel like i was carrying it well.

when i finally decided to lose the weight, running was the main tool. it worked, but it was a slow grind of dropping pounds over time. i added intermittent fasting in 2018 and that started to speed things up a little. then during covid, when running became one of the main things keeping me outside and sane, i remember stepping on the scale literally on my birthday in 2020 and seeing a 1 as the first digit for the first time in a very long time. 199.9, haha. maybe my lightest since high school. that felt huge. i was so stoked i had to take a picture of it.

happy birthday 2020!

but the bigger shift happened later.

a challenging personal event two years ago pushed me into the weight room as both a distraction and a way to keep my head straight. i started going to carl’s garage gym, and he showed me proper form and technique in a way i had never really learned before. i had lifted briefly with the football team back in high school under coach gallagher, but i quit before i ever played a game. the time commitment wasn’t for me, and between that and working multiple days a week at flounders produce market with my dad, it felt like i was losing too much of the rest of my life. after that, lifting was always something i’d do for a couple weeks here and there before drifting away from it again. (right frank?)

i never stayed with it long enough to really change -- mentally or physcially.

then heartbreak did what heartbreak does. every time i found myself thinking about her and the future i thought i was going to have with her, i’d go lift something heavy. not in some rage-filled movie montage kind of way. just to get out of my own head. and pretty quickly, i started seeing body changes. then i started liking the changes. then i spent five grand or so reparging cement and turning my basement into a gym, and that was the real turning point. once i could wake up, go downstairs, train, come back up, shower, and be done in under an hour, the friction disappeared. i stopped needing motivation every day. routine took over. and i started looking forward to lifting.

that changed a lot.

i took a dexa scan in december 2021 at my mom’s suggestion, partly because of my dad’s osteoporosis, and came in just under 20% body fat. if i took one now, i’d guess i’m closer to 15%. more importantly, over the last two years i’ve added real muscle while cutting fat, and i feel a thousand times better than i did even five years ago. yes, it’s nice when you start seeing it yourself in the mirror. yes, it’s even nicer when eventually somebody says you’re looking buff or yoked or whatever version of that they use. but it’s not just aesthetic. i think more clearly. i feel stronger. i feel more ambitious and confident. i feel healthier. honestly, at nearly 45, i’m in the best shape of my life. and yes, of course, i look way better naked.

carl said something to me once that stuck: at this point, we’re going to be the old dads, so we better be the in-shape old dads. it was funny, but it also hit. i’m not twenty-five anymore. strength, health, and durability matter more to me now, not less.

that’s why the 70 mpw question is not just about whether i can handle marathon volume. it’s also about whether i can chase this goal without giving back too much of what i’ve built.

i know the lifting has to change. i’m not confused about that. i can’t train like a guy chasing heavy squats and bodybuilding-style volume and then expect to show up ready for hard workouts and long threshold runs. if i wreck my legs under the bar, i’m going to feel it everywhere. upper body work hopefully stays. lower body probably becomes more about support than punishment: hamstrings, glutes, mobility, stability, durability.

and recovery has to tighten up too. easy runs actually easy. zone 2 actually zone 2. red light in the morning. more discipline on the days that don’t look impressive so i can be ready for the days that matter. that may end up being the bigger challenge for me anyway. not whether i can suffer, but whether i can keep my competitive tendencies from turning every run into a referendum on my fitness.

because if this build is going to work, it can’t just be about how hard i’m willing to go. it has to be about whether i can stay patient enough to let the plan work.

that’s where coach barlow comes in. part of this whole thing is trusting that i’ve got her helping me channel the effort correctly, keep my head straight, and not let my own instincts blow up the bigger goal. the prize is tokyo. the prize is sub-3. the prize is getting to that start line healthy, strong, and prepared enough to give myself a real shot.

the plan at the start, i am sure this will change. i'm up to 40 miles a week now. wish me luck.

and to be clear, the build is already underway, and it has already been a little ridiculous. first there was the "happy birthday!" colonoscopy and cleanse, which left me uber-dehydrated during the canadian wildfires that wrecked havoc on my lungs. then i got stung on the foot while digging out the pond in my backyard , which is a sentence that sounds fake but is unfortunately real. then i pulled a hamstring chasing down a fly ball in softball and lost a couple of weeks. and when i started running again, i noticed this weird little flick outward in my right foot stride that now has my attention too. so just about what you expect... smooth sailing!

but it’s official. i am running.

now you know. that’s the puzzle, and that’s the challenge. how to run enough to build the engine, how to lift enough to keep the strength and structure i care about, and how to recover well enough to hold the whole thing together. i’m not interested in drifting into 2027 and hoping it somehow happens. i’m building for it now. deliberately. stubbornly. and with the full understanding that if i want to pull this off, i have to respect the process as much as i respect the outcome.

i’ll write through it here when i can, as it unfolds — the good stretches, the bad ones, the adjustments, the setbacks, and whatever i learn trying to turn this body into a sub-3 marathoner without losing too much of everything else i worked hard to build.

お先に失礼します

#tokyo2027 #travel #fitness