City Streets Not Place To Run

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30560, 1 October 1964, Page 19

City Streets Not Place To Run

/From NOKMAN HARRIS, "New Zealand Herald" Reporter!

TOKYO, September 30.

It is not quite such an easy matter as it might appear, in a land which enthuses over the marathon race, for distance runners to train round the streets of Tokyo.

It is permissible to train on the marathon course only at rare intervals and it is not even possible to run on city streets at any hour of the day.

The Meiji Park, with its .shrine next to the village, contains inviting paths and terrain like a small golf course—which the New Zealand runners joyfully ran through on their arrival.

But it is now found to be too revered to be spoiled by runners’ footsteps. The training supervisory department at the village points out that not even nonOlympic runners or local citizens are allowed to run on the pavements of city streets.

“The traffic is very difficult,” explained an official.

Runners are restricted to training on the marathon course between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Sundays, on a circuit around a park 10 minutes from the village for two hours each morning and afternoon, and on the last 10,000 metres of the marathon course, almost into the country, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m, each day. Applications have to be made to use these roads—or rather the pavements. The only alternative is to run around the small roads of the village. Consequently, the trial which the marathon runners always take over the full course three weeks before competition will have to be compacted into the far end of the course.