Final Preparations

In 1983, I was a History and Civics teacher at Academy of Our Lady of Guam, a Catholic girls' high school. It was a job that I enjoyed because of the challenges involved in teaching young students. As all good teachers know, the job is not an easy one if you want to be most effective. It took a lot out of me to teach a number of classes every day in addition to advising school clubs, but I think I benefited from the experience just as much as the students did. Unfortunately, AOLG being a small, private school, it did not pay very much. I dug into my savings to purchase my airline tickets to Japan and the one-week railpass on Japan National Railways (JNR) that I planned on using after the run.

My first year as a schoolteacher was coming to an end and I had the entire summer break ahead of me. I had meticulously planned the route for my run, which I had been working on since the time I was still a student at Western State College of Colorado. For technical assistance, I had been communicating with Mr. Kanzo Ito, the president of the Japan Marathon Association. This association had ties with running clubs throughout Japan and Mr. Ito was in touch with the ones on my planned route to let them know I was coming through. Mr. Ito had represented Japan as a marathon runner in the Berlin Olympics back in 1936, the Hitler Olympics. As a veteran marathon runner and Olympian (once an Olympian, always an Olympian, and never a "former Olympian"), Mr. Ito was well respected by all the marathon club members throughout Japan. He and I became friends in the previous year when he came to Guam with a number of runners for the Guam Seiko Marathon.

The logistics for the run were worked out with Mr. Ito. Some running clubs were to have runners join me on certain segments of the run and would help carry my belongings. We also decided that I would travel on the western coastline of Japan to avoid going through the major metropolitan areas in the Kansai and Kanto regions. The route would hug the Sea of Japan most of the way. From Kyushu to Honshu, I would run through the underground tunnel at Shimonoseki. To get to Hokkaido from Honshu, I would have to take the Seikan Ferry (owned by JNR) since there was still no tunnel that connected the two islands.

I was able to find two excellent sponsors--ASICS and Champion Products. ASICS provided me with some shoes for the run, and Champion Products supplied the running wear. Champion also contributed some yen to help defray the cost for food and lodging, which was going to be no small amount for the planned 2-month period of the run.

At this point, I started asking myself, "What are you getting yourself into?" A friend of mine from Sasebo, half-jokingly (or maybe he was dead-serious) asked, "What are you going to do if you don't even make it out of the island of Kyushu?" and followed it up with a loud laugh, "Wa Ha Ha Ha....!" This question and the laughter played over and over in my head as I lay in the hospital bed a few weeks later in Kyushu...