Why did I DNF at the Tokyo Marathon?

I’m still trying to figure out what happened. The intent of this post is to help me understand what went wrong so I can make informed decisions about what to do next. 

I went halfway across the world to DNF – did not finish, a marathon. My first ever marathon DNF. I did not expect or intend to DNF. To say that my spirit is crushed doesn’t even begin to touch the emotions that even now, four days after the race, continue to raise hell with my brain and my guts. 

I need to start at the start of all this. I’ll begin by telling you a bit about this marathon. The Tokyo Marathon is one of the original six Abbott Marathon Majors. I decided a few years ago that completing all six would be a cool goal. At that point, I’d already finished the first three – Boston (eight times), New York, and Chicago. I didn’t run them because they were Abbotts. I ran them because I wanted to run them. Running the Abbotts is some people’s thing. It wasn’t mine. It’s still not my thing in some ways. 

The Marathon Majors is basically a group of races sponsored by Abbott. That's it. Yes, the races are considered prestigious in the running world. But in my opinion, all marathons are pretty prestigious. What makes some more prestigious than others? Well, in the case of a few marathons, like Boston and Athens, there’s history and tradition. But in my opinion the lure of the Abbotts is mainly a product of good marketing. Still, marketing manipulation be damned, I was getting set to retire and then travel a little. I figured, why not run those other three races? It’s good to have goals, right? 

I trained hard for the first three of those Abbotts, which I did randomly over several years, with no particular goals in mind other than to experience new places. For Berlin, my first retirement-era Abbott, I barely ran. My mother passed shortly after I signed up. Her death was unexpected. It was traumatic. During that time when I should have been racking up miles, I was deep in grief fog territory. For months, I had trouble functioning day to day. Getting out of bed was an achievement. Training properly for a marathon was outside my abilities. But I was signed up, so I went to Berlin. Don’t know how I finished. But I don’t know how I had the gumption to start either. 

By London several months later, I was almost back to normal – or whatever we call that state of mind when we can get out of bed and function appropriately even though we’ve recently lost a loved one. I sort of trained. Sort of didn’t. London has generous time limits. I knew I’d be slow, but I also knew that I’d finish. I didn’t put in the work necessary to finish any faster than I was likely going to because I didn’t need to and didn’t want to.  I was slowly coming to the realization that when it comes to marathons, I was getting burnt out. 

Then -- almost a year and another bunch of marathons after London ( guess I wasn’t as burned out as I thought because I kept signing up for races) I got into the Tokyo Marathon. On paper, I now had five of Abbott’s six stars. 

When you complete all six Abbott marathons, you get a fancy silver medal commemorating that achievement. I’m not a big bling person. I know lots of marathoners who devote entire rooms to medal displays. My medals? Some are in a box in my attic. Some hang from my bureau mirror, and some are on various clothing hooks in my laundry room. My medals generally end up living wherever I drop them when I return from a race. I think I even have a few in the car somewhere. What I’m saying is that the bling is nice, but that’s not why I run. Honestly, I don’t know why I run. I don’t enjoy it that much anymore. That’s a topic to explore another day. 

For me getting that six-star medal at the completion of the Tokyo Marathon was a fun extra, but not the end all and be all of my existence. This becomes important later, trust me. I wanted to finish all six Abbotts. That’s a definite. But getting the medal? Not a motivator. 

I was stressed about doing Tokyo from the minute I signed up. I used to be a middle-ish of the pack runner. But these last few years, I have been more than happy finishing at the back. But to run Tokyo, even to be a back of the packer, I needed to step up and train because the Tokyo Marathon has strict time limits. You WILL get swept if you don’t hit certain course points by specific times. 

I knew this when I signed up. I knew this as I trained. I actually trained!!!!!  For the first time in years. I trained consistently, running or cross training at least four days a week. Weight training two times a week. Ran two 20-milers. Lost a bunch of weight in the process. And was ready for the big day. Based on my training times, I should have had no problem whatsoever on race day. 

You can only control so much. 

I did all I could to ensure that I would cross that Tokyo finish line. I write that now because I keep having to remind myself that yes, I put in the work. The beating myself up part of DNFing? Killing me still.  

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t swept. I took myself off the course. That’s another fact I have to keep reminding myself of. I. Took. Myself. Off. The. Course. Ugh. I still can’t believe I did that. I still don’t know if I did the right thing, although all my running friends assure me that I did. I am still so angry at the circumstances that played into the choice that I made to DNF. There were many factors. All of them were out of my control. I need to keep reminding myself of that. Yet another reason why I write all of this out today. 

Now I’m going to talk about fainting. Specifically, me and fainting. 

Fifteen years ago, I fainted at work. It was a week before Christmas. I had just returned from bringing my students to the gym. I was alone in my classroom. I remember standing behind my desk, looking out the window and thinking about how pretty it was outside, how the sky, the brick apartment buildings, the few leaves on the blighted trees were unusually brilliantly colored. Next thing I know, I’m waking up from a deep sleep on what I thought was my bed. It took a few seconds for me to realize I was laying on the wooden floor behind my desk. I had a splitting ache above one ear, likely where my head smacked into my metal desk as I fell.  I remember grabbing my pocketbook and rushing down the two flights of stairs to the nurse’s office. There, nurse Cathy, who also happens to be a dear running friend, asked me where my students were, asked me to tell her the time, and asked a few other questions as well. I had a hard time putting words together. I remember I could see the clock on the wall, but couldn't say what time it was. We figured that I was likely unconscious 15 minutes or so. 

Went by ambulance to the hospital and was monitored overnight. All test results were normal. Had one more fainting spell in the hospital bed but that passed quickly. The docs couldn’t explain why I fainted. Had no concussion but developed vertigo, likely due to the head injury. 

The vertigo lasted a good six months. Sometimes I could cope with it. But often I could not. I was out of work a lot during that time. Thankfully, I had the sick days and a kind, understanding boss. Since then, I’ve had occasional vertigo episodes that spring up randomly, but nothing that’s lasted very long or been serious enough for treatment.

Two years ago, my last year teaching, I fell down a half flight of concrete stairs at work. My classroom was on the top floor of a four-floor building. Yes, there was an elevator, but only administrators and folks with disabilities were given keys. The rest of us had to schlep up and down the stairs like good little minions, which is yet another reason why I hate the district in which I worked. It was lunchtime and I was bringing things out to my car. My hands were full, so I wasn’t holding on to the banister. I got dizzy and missed a step, falling a good ten to twelve feet. I had enough presence of mind to roll when I landed, and in the process protected my head. My back and one arm took the brunt of the fall. Thankfully, other than a lot of soreness, there was no injury. I spent months in physical therapy though because my back ached so badly. This fall occurred about a month before my mother passed. 

And now I remember something else. I actually DID train for Berlin. Or started to train at least. I had started back to running seriously just a few weeks before the fall. Then, due to the back injury, I couldn’t run or engage in any other strenuous activity for six weeks. My Berlin training was temporarily on hold. While I was recovering from the fall, that’s when my mom suddenly fell ill and life fell apart. 

I hope I’m not boring any of you reading this. There’s a connection to Tokyo here, I promise. And besides, I’m not writing this to entertain anyone. I’m writing this for me, so I can make sense of why I chose to travel 6,000 miles to a race that I then pulled out of. 

So to summarize so far: Abbotts, fainting, head injury, vertigo, dizziness, injury, major life impacts. 

Now fast forward to eighteen days before the Tokyo Marathon. 

In November as I got deep into training, I developed plantar fasciitis. Fun. To keep training for Tokyo, I had physical therapy twice a week. Because the sole of my foot was so inflamed, I couldn’t run outside. Instead, I ran indoors on an anti-gravity treadmill. Over time, I was able to increase body weight on the treadmill from sixty percent with pain to, in my final sessions, 85 percent with barely a tweak. I have great physical therapists. 

Eighteen days before Tokyo, I did my second of two twenty-mile training runs. As with all my previous Tokyo long runs, I took no water the first hour of my run (the Tokyo sweeps times are super stringent the first seven miles) then hydrated and took in nutrition as I normally would. The run was epic. I was consistent, strong, unstoppable. I was psyched. I was ready for Tokyo. More than ready. I was no longer holding up the caboose end of things. I was the comeback kid, the scrappy underdog. In that last long run, I finally broke through and shed a decade of slower than slow and steady. I was finally, once again, a middle-of-the-packer.

Five minutes after I stopped running. Everything changed. I remember talking with the physical therapists and basking in their praise. Then I started seeing spots and I asked to sit down. Next thing I know, I’m surrounded by concerned faces. I’d passed out. Or had a seizure. They, the physical therapists and the nurse they’d called over from the next office, couldn’t tell for sure. They said my eyes rolled up into my head and my left hand was shaking. I was out about a minute. I have no memory of any of this. 

At the ER, they found nothing wrong. EKGs, x-rays, all kinds of bloodwork, including two tests for heart attack enzymes. No diagnosis. No suggestions on what to do next.  

To say this experience scared the daylights out of me would be an understatement. The only positive in all this? I was sitting down when it happened, so I didn’t hurt my head, like I did when I fainted years back. 

All good? No. I live in two states. I’m fully covered for doctor visits in one state. In the state where I fainted, I’m only covered for emergency services. 

Called my doctor back home and she wanted to see me and run a few tests.  We made an appointment, and I booked a flight for the next week. I was exhausted. That episode took a lot out of me. I took several days off from training, and slept a ton, ate a lot and drank gallons of water. I returned to the alter g when I started feeling normal. Only I wasn’t. Each of the three times I got on the treadmill, I had to cut the session short because I started getting lightheaded. I didn’t want to pass out again. 

My flight home to see my doctor got canceled due to bad weather, so getting a second opinion, or even a definitive first opinion before the race was out. 

On the phone, my doctor said that if I still planned on going to Tokyo, I should go to the emergency room and get retested. My response: “What’s the point? The tests after I passed out were fine. And I’d just run twenty miles.” Plus, I was thinking that the visit might not be covered by my insurance, because my insurance only covered emergencies. And deliberately going to an ER when you’re feeling okay isn’t exactly an emergency, so I’d have no ground to stand on if my insurance decided to not foot the bill. 

So to review. In a matter of a few days, I went from having my best run in years, to being absolutely terrified about vertigo, head injuries, passing out.

I looked into canceling the trip because that made the most sense. Turns out I’d bought travel insurance for the flight, which was good. But I hadn’t bought travel insurance for the actual week-long visit, which was very bad. That was just plain stupid on my part. 

I flew to Tokyo and decided that I’d decide whether to run once I was there. 

Very few people knew I was running Tokyo. I decided I’d keep things that way because my situation was so iffy. But I’d forgotten about the energy and enthusiasm that surrounds you when you travel with other marathoners. It’s intoxicating and leads to all kinds of craziness. I posted on social media that I was running Tokyo. I spent lots of money on Tokyo Marathon branded clothing. For all intents and purposes, I was cementing my plans to run the marathon. I started envisioning the start, the finish, the triumph after. I truly believed I was going to be okay. 

Now comes the hard part. 

The morning of the race, I woke up bloated. Not ideal, but it happens. My mouth was cottony. No idea why. Normally in the few hours before a marathon, I’m drinking a lot of water and running back and forth to the bathroom. But not this morning. In addition to having tight sweeps times, Tokyo is notorious for having long lines at bathrooms that might be ten minutes off the course. Like most of the runners I know, I can’t afford to wait in line fifteen or twenty minutes once the race has begun. Every runner I know is doing the same thing as I am, deliberately limiting water intake before the race. I reminded myself that I trained this way, too. So I should be okay. 

I try to NOT think about the fact that taking in limited water may have been one of the reasons I passed out/seized after that twenty-mile run. But the thought is there anyhow. Maybe I passed out because I was dehydrated? Sure, the ER tests didn’t show evidence of dehydration, but that could be because I was plied with water,  juice, and goldfish crackers by the physical therapy staff and nurse once I regained consciousness.

Tokyo has stringent requirements regarding hydration. Runners aren’t allowed to carry their own water or electrolyte drinks. You go through security before you get into your corral. Security checks for everything. Tokyo promised to provide copious amounts of water and a Gatorade-like product at all hydrations stops, which start at the three-kilometer mark then continue at every two or three kilometers after. When I expressed concerns about potential lack of water to a friend who’d run the race before, she told me not to worry. “They have plenty of water,” she said. Those were her exact words. 

We are in our corral, a section of road, by 7:45. For the next 90 minutes we sit on hard gravel and chat. There are plenty of portable toilets, but there is nothing for us to drink. Normally, I’m running back and forth to the bathroom right before a race. Today, I don’t need to. My mouth is parched. 

The race starts and I soon run into trouble. My legs don’t want to work properly. Around me, people are pushing, shoving, elbowing. I tell myself things will get better. Remind myself that the first mile is a liar. That’s a saying you see a lot on runner T-shirts. 

But things don’t get better. Instead, I find it hard to breathe. My chest feels heavy and my shoulders and arms feel weak. My throat hurts because it’s so dry. I’d trained and planned to run the first seven miles, then run/ walk the rest of the race. A good strategy in theory.  But the reality is that I’m only a half mile in and gasping for air. I slow down and walk fast for a minute or so, then start running again. Then I’m gasping then walking. I proceed this way until the first water stop only there’s nothing there. Even interspersing my running with walking, I still made it to the first stop in under twelve minutes. The timing was great. My body wasn’t though. And the water stop was shit. 

I nearly walked off the course right then and there. There were still at least 5,000 runners behind me. And yet the water stop had run out of cups. Volunteers were telling people to cup their hands and were pouring water directly into runners’ hands. I’d never witnessed such insanity. This was supposedly one of the top marathons in the world, with the most stringent time requirements. And if runners wanted the water that they’d paid for, that they’d been promised, they had to stand patiently, clock ticking away, and wait for a volunteer to pour water into other runners’ hands then back to their hands. 

I was angry, disgusted, and worried that I wasn’t taking in enough fluids. You never want to start a race dehydrated. You can’t come back from that. Things will only get worse. And if the reason you fainted a few weeks ago was because of dehydration? Well, that’s a death sentence right there.  

And too, if the race was managed so ineptly that they’d run out of supplies at the first stop, then it was more than likely that the rest of the race would be even more of a shit show. How was I going to survive another 39 kilometers? How were any of us?  

Now I need to mention something else. I was a water stop captain for the Boston Marathon for ten years. I was so good at what I did that I received an award. I was one of only ten volunteers to receive this award. When it comes to supporting runners, I know what I’m doing and what needs to be done. I knew with every bone in my aching body that this entire set up was dangerous. Knowledge is power. But knowing too much can be devastating. Sometimes it's better to be ignorant about things like what dehydration can do to your body. It's easier to continue if you don't know what to expect.Especially when you have 25 miles of next to no water ahead of you. 

And then the dizziness hit. The faint at your teacher desk, fall down the school stairs, pass out at the physical therapists’ office dizziness. But along with that came something brand new: a crushing sensation in my chest and – the only way I can describe this -- a feeling of impending doom. Everything felt horribly off. 

My body was sending signals that I didn't understand. I tried ignoring them. I tried positive self-talk. You can do this! Don’t you want that six-star medal? Maybe at the next water stop things will be different. 

The next water stop was even more disorganized. Even more lacking. They had cups, but I had to wait along with other runners, while the volunteers poured water into them. Then wait for more. We each got about an inch of water at a time. And the clock kept ticking. The more water you needed, the longer you waited for it. 

At that point, I knew I was done. The writing was on the wall. I was lightheaded. I was angry. But what about that six-start medal? 

“Fuck that,” I told myself. “It’s probably worth a buck fifty anyhow. Is my health worth only that much?”

I was done. I stopped running and walked. I walked slowly because I was worried that I’d fall and hit my head. 

At mile six, I asked a volunteer if I could cross the road to the sweeps bus which was just a few yards away. He said no. He pointed down the side of the road I was on and said I needed to go all the way down the street until I hit the turnaround point, then walk back up the opposite side of the road if I want to get on the sweeps bus, in total a mile or so. 

First no water. And now this. Another unbelievable slap in the face. When a runner says they’re lightheaded, you help them. You don’t tell them to keep walking. You take their arm, if necessary, and you guide them. Job one: safety. What a shit show. 

As I write this back at my house, in my comfy robe and with my cats purring nearby, I’m wearing a holter monitor, which is measuring my heart activity for the next two weeks. I’m also keeping track of my symptoms in a log that I have to turn in to my doctor. I’m taking and recording my blood pressure several times a day. I’m hoping that in a few weeks I’ll have some answers. I never want to DNF again. It’s too painful. 

I think back on those moments during the race when I started feeling off.  Feeling lightheaded. Pressure on the chest and shoulders. Weakness in my arms. That frightening sense of impending doom. I remember thinking that if I passed out on the course, I’d land on hard pavement. And if Tokyo was so mismanaged it couldn’t even provide basics like the water it promised us, how likely was I to receive adequate medical care? 

I know I did what was right for me at the time. To do otherwise would have been disrespectful to myself and might have, to paraphrase the great Steve Prefontaine, involved sacrificing the gift of a healthy body.  By dropping out, I think I hope that I truly gave my best. But I have to wonder, if Tokyo had done its part and given me and all the other runners the water that we were promised, would I have dropped out? Would I have needed to even consider dropping out? 

Considering that Tokyo is a major race, I had a right to expect a well-run marathon. I have never run such a mess of a race. And I’m so angry that I didn’t get what I deserved. What all of us runners deserved. 

I’ve written angry letters to the Tokyo race organizers and to Abbott. I got a form letter back from Tokyo, thanking me for writing them. I got a personal reply from Abbott telling me that someone would get back to me in the next few days. We shall see. Right now, I have no faith whatsoever in either organization.

I have new places to explore and more races to run. This DNF sting is a killer. But I'll get past it, even if it's just one angry step at a time. Life marches on. So do I. More later.