Tokyo Marathon 2011 and Joseph Tame

Tokyo Marathon 2011 has come and gone. I was awake early this morning and ready to watch with a fresh pot of coffee brewed. It was a sunny and warm day in Tokyo. The runners were lucky to have such wonderful weather. The previous two years at the Tokyo Marathon, the conditions were wet and very cold.

The men’s race was won by Hailu Mekonnen of Ethiopia and the women’s race by Tatiana Aryasova of Russia.

The coolest story of the day for me was that of Joseph Tame. He is a Tokyo based Englishmen who was covering the race live via UStream, Runkeeper and some other means. He had created a device he dubbed the “iRun” using four iPhones, an Android handset and an iPad. He was ran the entire marathon carrying his contraption and interviewing people along the way.


here is a story about TameGoesWild, Joseph Tame in one of the biggest tech blogs out there, Engadget.

Joseph was also covered by CNN and many other news organizations. He fit the novelty/tech story bill!

I met Joseph in person very briefly last year while I was running the Tokyo Marathon. He then had an iPhone 3GS strapped to a headband. I ran over and chatted with him. Later over twitter, I learned that while we chatted, his audio was actually set to mute!


Here is Joseph on Japanese TV:


here is Joseph Tame's Tokyo Marathon 2011 site.

Disappointment, Sunsets and Red Lights

A busy week for me, but then again, every week seems busy. When you work six days a week, are training for a marathon and have a family, time must be scheduled very carefully!

A little disappointment for me on Friday. I was notified by the Tokyo Marathon that I was not selected to run in next year's race. As with many large marathons, runners are selected in a lottery. With 30,000 spots and almost 10 times as many people applying I was lucky to get in last year, but this year my luck had run out. Regardless, i have two marathons to run in the next two months and am thinking about running an ultra marathon next Spring.

It has been a beautiful weekend here in Kobe, Japan. Check out a few pictures I took last night from my balcony. The sunset was amazing!





On my way home from work yesterday afternoon, I got off the train and did some running. I ran past a rather seedy alley and decided to explore. Check out the video I made about my explorations!