Sunday, March 23rd was a beautiful day – sunny and breezy, a nice respite from the Winter blues and impending humidity. And at the tail end of a crowd nearly 10,000 people strong were two Tosu city ALTs waiting for the Saga Sakura Marathon & Fun Run starting pistol. 

In late September, we signed up for the Saga Sakura fun run after some encouragement from a colleague. We’re both relatively fit, and Cyrus had already done a 10km race in May of 2024. We figured we’d have plenty of time to get into fighting shape (our first mistake).

In October, when the heat and humidity was starting to wane, we attempted a late-night run: a steady 3km from our apartments up to Mount Asahiyama and back again. We were nearly home when Seb moved out of the way of an approaching car, accidentally stepping (well, dropping – they’re incredibly deep!) into a roadside gutter and breaking his foot.

“It can’t be that bad,” he said to himself as he limped the remaining kilometer back home. He’d sprained his ankle plenty of times, so this was just another day at the office. That was, until he took his socks off and noticed the xenomorph-esque bulge protruding from his ankle. “Yup, I’m cooked.” One hospital visit and some x-rays later, he was diagnosed with a fifth metatarsal fracture and an expected recovery time of 2~3 months. There went his hopes of properly training for the 10K… “But hey, as with anything in life, you’ve got to roll with the punches. Japan is going to throw many things at you (including gutters) and you will have to embrace the adversity. That’s the beauty of this one of a kind experience.”

With Winter past its apex and Seb back on his feet, we met up for our last run together in February, on a day plagued by torrential rain. Cyrus felt pretty lousy a couple of days later, and figured she’d just caught a cold – we had stomped about in a downpour, after all, and then pushed ourselves to run 8km. But it only got worse; chills, a nasty fever, voice phlegmy and croaky. She caved and went to the clinic, suffering paperwork and swabs with her saint of a JTE, and half an hour later the doctor clapped her on the shoulder and cheerily announced “Coronavirus!” So she was on house arrest for almost two weeks, feverish and unable to train, and barely a month to go until the race.

After suffering through injury and illness, we both felt rather underprepared come race day. There was a nervous buzz as the crowd moved through the starting blocks. Had we done enough? Would we make it the whole way? Was Seb going to accidentally follow the Marathon route? (Almost!)

But it really was a beautiful day, and so many people had turned out to cheer the runners on along the route, so 10km flew us by. We both finished within a respectable 60~67 minutes (though Yoshida-sensei left us in the dust) and were very pleased with ourselves as we sat catching our breath out on the track behind Saga Sunrise Park.

It was very surreal on our way back home to watch the colourful procession of runners trailing out from Saga city up towards Yoshinogari Koen – we’re not sure if we’ll ever be Marathon ready in this lifetime! Half marathon, maybe? (With less broken bones and quarantines we hope!)

If you’d like to make the same mistake we did, sign-ups for the Spring 2026 Saga Sakura Marathon should open around September~October 2025. 頑張りましょう！