Special Feature: Osaka Sweets Marathon

Having somehow managed to get through the Kobe Marathon in November and remain smiling for most of it (no I’m not sure how that happened either), I had almost forgotten that I’d signed up to participate in the Osaka Sweets Marathon in December. When signing up, I think my reasoning went something along the lines of ‘Well I’ll probably want to give up on running post-marathon training, so it will be a good incentive to keep going‘ then ‘We’re doing it as a group, so it’s not like I’ll be doing another full marathon.’ But topping everything was ‘SWEETS – I can get free cakes and sweets and general things of the tasty persuasion and justify it by running a bit? Hell yeah, where’s the dotted line?’

 

Osaka is not alone in holding a Sweets Marathon. A quick look at the Sweets Marathon website reveals these sugar-loaded events take place all over Japan, from Hokkaido down to Fukuoka. The first event took place in Osaka in 2010, planned as a one-off. This year’s December event was the 16^th Sweets Marathon, with the 17th to take place in Tokyo in January, and the 18^th in Fukuoka come March. There were over 6,000 participants running around Osaka Castle, happily shoving everything from egg tarts to green tea brownies in their faces. Blithely ignoring the pleas of the organisers who wanted runners to consume all their goodies at the ‘Aid Station’, I was not alone in grabbing handfuls of yum and running back to my teammates before chowing down.

The idea of a Sweets Marathon really is a fantastic one. You get to reward yourself and fuel your exercise as you go along. Not only that,  but the range of sweets on offer is extensive enough that there was definitely a large part of me wishing I had been around the course a few more times. Teams of up to 10 people are permitted, which is exactly the 人数 we had. The course is a 2km loop with the ‘Aid station’ (read ‘giant tables of sweets, cakes, jelly…oh, and some water at the end’) just over halfway through. The first runner covers the additional 0.2km, which, along with 21 circumnavigations of the loop, gives you your marathon distance. A few of our team members were initially hesitant to do two rounds (a few questioning their sanity on participating at all, but the draw of the sweets was strong…) but in the end that’s how it was divvied up, with our glorious leader taking on the last stretch and running thrice*. For the last little bit leading up to the finish line, the other nine of us joined in and we piled over the finish line en masse.

As a relay, it was a really social affair and a great way to catch up with people. The downtime when you aren’t running provides ample time to natter about life in general along with what you’re going to grab on your next circuit. However, it wasn’t exactly a warm day and that did start to take its toll a little. Many other groups had tents along with their tarpaulins, something I would definitely consider in the future. The temperature was perfect for the running part of the affair, but you spend a lot of time not running too, and that got chilly. The rather fetching hat/neck warmer given to everyone who took part was very appreciated, despite being bright pink. Having less time between runs would also probably have been a good plan – fewer giant temperature changes so in theory better for you on the ‘not catching a cold’ front.

For an event which is largely presented as non-serious, the time limit of four and a half hours seemed a bit strict to me. Okay, so you would expect it to be faster than a normal marathon, but you certainly can’t dawdle if you want to spend any time appreciating the bits and pieces on offer. If people were actually keeping to the ‘only eat at the Aid station’ rule, I imagine far fewer teams would have finished within the time limit. I went charging round the course in order to get what I considered a reasonable selection of goodies. However, along with the rest of my team mates, I found upon arrival at Sweets Town that my appetite was somewhat lacking. On top of that, the egg tart that I shoved down my gullet made me feel more than a little queasy.  Taking a bag to nab a load of goodies is going a bit far, but I’m glad the odd bit of 持ち帰り(もちかえり) was let slide. No doubt the organisers also reasoned that while squashed cakes on the course may have been undesirable, people throwing up all over the place would have been worse. And it is a sweets marathon after all! What would be the point of having one if you couldn’t actually eat the things without feeling awful? I swear that’s why there were brownies – very easy to transport.

All in all, it was a fun, if slightly cold, day spent with great people doing something every-so-slightly silly. Everywhere you looked there were people dressed up; laughing with each other; debating the merits of different cakes; asking about where the baumkuchen was (right at the end of the table, just before the water). Our team hadn’t really trained for it at all (while no doubt an advantage, the short distance and fast pace meant the marathon training didn’t even feel like it meant much!) but we finished promptly and received our (really very tasty) custard tarts to take home (they’re wonderful, just not when you running!). It was a day full of people supporting each other, smiling at each other and eating cake together. What more could you want (except maybe more time)?

Imogen Custance