Jul 18 (soranews24.com) - The Sapporo Marathon is an annual long-distance running event, held in the cool month of October. Due to Hokkaido’s favorable climate and wonderful autumn scenery it’s a popular race, drawing hundreds of runners and thousands of spectators.
Of course, these days drawing hundreds and thousands of anyone is bad news, so organizers were faced with a dilemma of what to do this year. After careful consideration, they decided to join the growing trend of online marathons in which runners can cover the designated distance on any route they like using a GPS enabled smartphone app.
The Nagoya Women’s Marathon was the first in Japan to hold such an event last March after restricting the actual marathon to elite runners only. Although many took part, some reported that it wasn’t quite the same and had trouble getting the GPS to accurately record their real distance covered. Also, the cheering spectators were very much missed and frequent traffic lights made it incredibly hard to keep a steady pace without having to run dozens of laps around the same park.
Sapporo is a bit more spacious of a city, however, and might offer better opportunities for people to plot a clear and diverse route to run along. As long as they run the mandatory distances between 7 and 13 October, participants will receive a participation award, the form of which has yet to be announced. Considering the 2,500 yen (US$23) entry fee and limit of 4,000 runners is still in place, it might be decent.
It’ll never replace the actual magic of taking part in a marathon, but at least it gives runners something to strive for while navigating these difficult times. This event will be divided into a one-time half-marathon of 21.0975 kilometers (13 miles) and a “Fun Pair†run in which teams of two can work together to cover a cumulative 10 kilometers (6 miles) each over the course of as many separate runs as they want.
