Turtles all the way down (and back)

Getting cooler here again, which means it is running season. Yesterday jules and I ran a marathon, with "a" being the operative word, as we only did half each (not as a relay). It was the day of the "Turtle Marathon", the name of which is a mystery to me, other than that it was run by the "Japan Turtle Association" which seems to be an NPO which promotes exercise for the elderly. But that's just the next turtle in the stack. Anyway we fitted right in with the target demographic.

We were running at the same time, so we don't have any photos but here is an artist's impression of the scene:

It was raining steadily at the start, and absolutely tipping it down by the end, despite the event falling conveniently between last week's typhoon and this week's typhoon. I think the weather is teasing us for boasting about Japan's amazingly sunny winter weather, especially as we have a visitor from the UK at the moment. Though at least this means it wasn't too hot, which was a relief after what has seemed like a long hot summer. The event website was warning that the main risk was heatstroke, with the temperature reaching 30C at the same event two years ago. This time, hypothermia - or perhaps even drowning in the mudbath of the event centre - was probably a greater risk. The course was the same riverside path that I ran my first half on, though starting from the other end this time.

It was jules' first attempt at this distance, and even after being hugely held up at the start (lots of congestion on a fairly narrow path) she comfortably achieved her 2h goal with 1h58:20 (216th out of 1160 women). My run was a fairly pedestrian 1:27:45 (176 out of 4955 men), almost a minute outside my best but I also lost some time at the start and wasn't running very hard. I think a lot of people didn't turn up due to the weather, they probably had an entry of 10,000. Now it is finally cold enough to run without worrying about heatstroke, so I can try running a bit harder next time.