Tokyo marathon runner solves mystery of sore nipples

With a title like that, how can you not read the “news” story?

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Tokyo marathon runner solves mystery of sore nipples

By Alastair Himmer

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Choking pollution and sapping heat will be the major concerns for the world’s elite marathon runners at this year’s Beijing Olympics.

But for millions of other marathon men and women, concerns are of an altogether more painful nature.

After his first assault at a marathon last year banker Brian Jones was shocked to discover the sharp pain in his chest was not cardiovascular, but bleeding nipples.

“When I took my shirt off at the end it was white — apart from two particular parts of it,” he told Reuters in an interview after completing his second Tokyo Marathon at the weekend.

“It looked like I had been shot by a sniper. This year I bought some Vaseline. It worked, although I had nasty chafing elsewhere.”

Such dark thoughts are unlikely to have troubled Sunday’s winner, Switzerland’s Viktor Roethlin, who powered to victory in two hours, seven minutes and 23 seconds.

But for around 30,000 fun runners who took part in Tokyo, issues such as chafing can trigger deep despair.

“I struggled to find a comfortable pair of underwear this morning,” said Jones, who clocked 4:37:46, beating his 2007 time by 11 minutes.

“I walked two kilometers this year, between 34 and 36km, because my leg seized up. The last 20-K was freezing. The wind was absolutely brutal.”

Jones credited the Japanese crowds lining the roads for helping him get to the finish.

“It was amazing,” smiled the 33-year-old bank employee. “Random people on the side of the street just appear with muscle sprays and start graffitiying the back of your leg.”

“AGONY”

Jones admitted to having had second thoughts about running again after a traumatic first attempt last year when he suffered an early knee injury.

“I was in agony last year,” said the Londoner. “My feet were all blistered and bleeding. My knee blew up. I could barely walk. Yesterday morning I was terrified.

“You read stories of runners who are fit and who train properly and they end up with serious problems, respiratory problems or someone had a heart attack.”

Worse even than the fear of sudden death, however, was the humiliation of being overtaken by pensioners at the 20km mark.

“I thought I was doing quite well and then there’s some 70-year-old granny I’m just catching up to,” Jones said with a sheepish grin.

With Tokyo’s elderly destroying his morale, and one runner further unbalancing him by trotting backwards down a hill, Jones had to trick his brain into staying focused.

“There was one woman dressed as a nurse, or a maid. I followed her for a bit,” he said.

“You think about anything to take your mind off the pain.”

Even during the most tortuous moments of Sunday’s race, quitting was never an option for Jones.

“I never thought I wouldn’t finish,” he said. “When it was really bad, when I got to about the 33km mark, it wasn’t a mental thing. It was just that my legs couldn’t move.

“I had cramp in my thighs, the back of my hamstrings, my calf and my shins — if that’s possible.”

Despite the pain, however, would he do it all again?

“Even though it hurts like hell it is fun, oddly,” said Jones. “Last year finishing at all was a miracle. When I finished I was close to breaking down.

“But I remember instantly thinking ‘I’m going to do that again.’ Yesterday I didn’t have that same feeling, although I was a little more philosophical this morning…”

(Editing by Sophie Hardach)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSSYD6114520080219?sp=true

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And that’s why I now wear compression underwear, top and bottom, when I run.

Tagged

Although you can’t see it, I’m shaking my fist at Brad, who tagged me with his questions. What’s really interesting is seeing the similarities between his answers and what some of mine will be.

Jobs I’ve held-

• Paperboy (2x)
• US Air Force (past 20+ years) as a “professional liar”. The real job is weather forecasting, but you all wouldn’t believe me, since you wouldn’t believe my forecasts.

Movies I Can Watch Over & Over-

• Bicentennial Man. Excellent story of life, love and optimism.
• Koyaanisqatsi. I first saw it at PBS soon after it was released back in 1982. The music and imagery floored me. Just this past year I finally got to see Philip Glass perform live, which was amazing.
• Memoirs of a Geisha. I love the story, but really love the scenes, since I’ve been lucky enough to have visit many of them.
• Blazing Saddles. Actually, anything Mel Brooks has done. I love the double entendre’s and wry twists on words. Madenline Kahn was pure genius as Lili Von Shtupp, the Teutonic Temptress.

I will have to tip my hat to Brad’s choice of Repo Man. What a great movie for the time, with the soundtrack of my youth. That and Suburbia.

My Guilty Pleasures-

I’m not guilty. Not one bit. They are my pleasures and I apologize to no one.

• My lovely bride.
• Beer. The darker the better.
• Chocolate. Just like beer, the darker the better. Gimme a block of baker’s chocolate and a cup of coffee and I’m in heaven.
• Bourbon. Which explains why I’m a Maker’s Mark Ambassador.
• A good cigar. Especially with a good bourbon. They complement each other so well.
• Books. I continue to buy them and am currently reading about seven, although I don’t have time to read. I have no idea how many I have in shelves and piles that I haven’t read yet.
• Karaoke. Not the bastardized American version, but the real Japanese version. Forget standing up on stage and being the center of attention, because that’s not what it’s about. Instead, you’re packed into a small bar with 20 of your closest friends, passing the microphone around, drinking, singing and having a great time. Some of my repertoire: Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People”, Green Day’s “Basket Case”, CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”, John Denver’s “Country Roads”, etc.

Places I Have Lived-

• S. Bay, San Fransisco
• Norfolk, VA
• Reno, NV
• Yokohama, Japan
• Ridgecrest, CA
• Coronado, CA
• Chula Vista, CA
• Marysville, CA
• Okinawa, Japan
• Mountain Home, ID
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Exmouth, Northwest Cape, Western Australia
• Fort Walton Beach, FL
• Tokyo, Japan
• Clarksville, TN

Shows I Enjoy-

• Scrubs
• House
• Soundstage
• Austin City Limits
• CBS Sunday Morning. Damn I miss Charles Kuralt; that man lived his life.

Places I have Been on Vacation-

• Venice, Italy
• Hamburg, Germany
• Oahu, Hawaii
• Perth, Western Australia
• Sydney, Australia
• Kyoto, Japan
• Sapporo, Japan

Favorite Foods-

• Japanese
• Mexican
• Italian
• Greek
• Whatever doesn’t get to me first. My Aussie friends thought I was nuts because I carried a tube of wasabi in the glove compartment of my ute (pickup). Whenever we’d go fishing, I’d eat the mackerel as we cleaned them. Octopus too, although I gained a respect for occy’s and refused to hunt them any more.

Websites I visit Daily-

• My my.yahoo page. News, cartoons, stories and e-mail.
• My DeviantArt page. Just to see what sorts of comments I’m still getting on my photography, although I’m nowhere near as active as I was a couple of years ago.
• My Google Reader page, which is a repository for all of my blog feeds.
• And the myriad pages I need for work.

Body Parts I have injured-

• My tongue. As a teenager, while surfing, I hit a bit of chop and it knocked the nose of my board up, hitting me in the chin. I then bit the corner of my tongue almost clean off; it was hanging by a thread. I should’ve got stitches, but that would have meant visiting the doctor, but I wouldn’t have any of that. It eventually healed.
• My ankle. Rolled it so hard going off a diving board that the grip tape on the board scraped the top of my foot off. Again, should’ve gone to the doctor, but wasn’t having any of that. It eventually healed.
• I’ve never broken a bone or got stitches due to an accident (knockin’ on serious wood here). My total stitch count is still under 10, and those were all for elective procedures.

Awards You’ve Won-

• A few job-related ones (yeah, I’m cheating here).

Nicknames you’ve been called-

• Bill
• Billy-jo-bob-bob-a-looie (by a good Aussie friend).
• And I’m sure quite a few R-rated ones.

Pick 4 Other Bloggers…

A tough one. There are quite a few that I’d like to know more about, but know that folks like their privacy. So…

• Molly
• Karl
• Brent
• Jenny

Well, that’s about it. Off to bed early tonight. Tomorrow’s my race simulation brick, which means 112 miles on the bike followed by a run of unknown distance. The run ends when I hit 8 hours total time, so it could be anywhere from 4 miles to 10 miles. The beauty is that I get to drive out to the location for my September IM-distance race, so I’ll get a good feel for the ride and run courses.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we aren’t in Tokyo anymore

It looks like it was the wrong time to get my blog rolling, what with a move halfway around the world rapidly approaching. But I had my reasons.

A lot has transpired in the past few months, but I won’t bore you with the details.

My frustrations with DeviantArt grow by the day. For a long time it has become apparent that the business decisions that are being made to run the site are made in a vacuum, with no concern for the paying customers of the site. And when feedback is given, it’s brushed aside or ignored completely. That’s definitely not a business that I can continue to support financially.

Any more than returning to a restaurant where the manager spits in your food before serving it. And when you point out that fact to him, he does it again.

But enough of that.

Our last full weekend in Tokyo and I got the shot that I really wanted to get the few years that I was there:

 

I was extremely lucky to get this shot. Right in the middle of Meiji Shrine in downtown Tokyo. The crowd parted perfectly to let this wedding procession through. I happened to be in the right spot at the right time. I can’t wait to get a print of it on my wall.

It was always fun to sit in the shrine and wait for the weddings. This time, I lucked out and got up close to get shots like this of a bride in her traditional kimono:

 

Imagine my surprise when she started whispering, in English, to her gaijin husband. She was complaining that she couldn’t possibly smile any more and that the sweat was pouring down her back. She was surprised when I laughed.

Just a few short days later, we were on a plane back to the United States. Not what we wanted, but we have to go where the work is. On our way back we stopped overnight in Seattle. Great city, from what we could see during our brief stay.

 

We were amazed by the synergistic architecture of the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project, as well as the grooves laid down by the street performers just a block away from the Pike Place Fish Market:

 

After a short 20 hours in Seattle, we were on the plane again to our destination, which looks nothing like Tokyo, with clean air, blue skies and trees:

 

The culture shock was pretty intense. It had been a couple of years since we had been back to the US and we honestly hadn’t missed it. We were quite comfortable and content in Japan. But we’ve slowly made the transition and are getting used to our surroundings.

We even got back into old routines, including spending last night wondering how long the tornado warnings would continue.

We must be over the rainbow.

Buddhism, Drunks and Mediums

A day with friends who introduced us to a relative, who happened to be a Buddhist monk who ran the family temple. The temple had passed from generation to generation for at least 400 years. It was a wonderful experience to be able to roam around the grounds and see the entire temple, including behind the scenes. Not something a gaijin normally gets to experience.

A few views through my eye:

 

Riding the trains in Tokyo is always an experience. On our way to the temple, I had the “pleasure” of sitting next to a stone-cold passed out drunk. Now, this isn’t the first time for this in Tokyo, but it was 12:30 in the afternoon! We figure he had been on the train for hours, riding back and forth from end to end. But the beauty of Japan is that he’s safe, although a few times I thought he’d throw up. In that case, he’d be out the door on his ear at the next stop.

That night, catching the last train is also quite the experience. Trains stop running here in Tokyo from about 1am until 4:30 am. So if you are going out for the night, you have two choices: start early and catch the last train, which is very crowded and full of tired drunk people, or start late and catch the first train, which is very crowded and full of tired drunk people. See, it’s an easy choice.

There are always great street scenes to find when walking around town before rushing to the station. Ginza at night is an cacophony of sound and barrage of light, but there are small islands of beauty:

 

In Ginza, palm readers set up card tables along the main street to make some money telling fortunes. But not every one is on top of the game:

 

We realized after I snapped this shot that she was sleeping. Definitely not doing her part to attract any customers.

That’s about the extent of my patience with the WordPress html limitations. It’ll take some time to get used to, but I will and will be able to post some more.