The other day, I ran in the Nihondaira Sakura Marathon.
This time I entered the 10 km course, so it wasn't all that long, but it was uphill aaaall the way to the turnaround point at 5 km, which was tough...

Our president Odagiri entered the same course, and since he has completed a full marathon before, he zipped right up the hill without breaking a sweat.

Honestly, I ended up walking a little partway, but the guys around me who still had energy to spare cheered me on with "Go for it!" and "Almost there!", so I would run whenever someone called out to me, walk a bit when I felt I couldn't take it, and repeating that, I somehow made it to the turnaround point.

When I started running marathons a year ago? Two years ago? I had no muscle, so running made my knees and lower back hurt (I know I sound like an old lady, but it really did hurt). Lately I seem to have built up a bit of muscle, and I was able to run the downhill stretch feeling great.

The way out was pretty brutal, but I finished safely. The downhill felt so good to run that, in the end, my verdict was that I was glad I took part. lol

This weekend I'm running the Kakegawa Shincha Marathon, which starts at Tsumagoi. This time it's a full marathon.

I've run the Kakegawa Shincha Marathon three times so far. Last year I took on the full marathon for the first time, but just before the 35 km cutoff point, at around 33 km, I simply couldn't move forward any more and got "donadona'd" (= picked up and carried off by the sweeper vehicle).

This year is my revenge, I suppose?

With a full marathon, you're running for a very long time. Fast runners finish in three or four hours, but runners like me whose goal is simply to finish take about six hours, or even longer.

If you start at 9 a.m., you finish at 3 p.m., so you can't complete the race without planning not only your pacing but also how you distribute your energy.

You see it at pretty much every marathon: young guys who take on a full marathon on a whim show off by sprinting at the start, and then it's a familiar sight to see them drop off in droves past the 10 km mark, or 20 km at best.

I'm barely hanging on myself and in no position to talk about others, but inwardly I think "oh dear..." as I pass them by.

The Kakegawa Shincha Marathon also has a hellish parade of hills after the 25 km? 30 km? mark, said to "turn runners into zombies." You have to run as fast as you can beforehand or you'll miss the time limit and be pulled from the course, but if you don't conserve your stamina you won't survive it... In the end you run with whatever time and stamina you have left, but I remember agonizing before the race last year over how best to pace myself (and in the end, those hills did me in anyway).

Ideally you keep a steady pace and get through both the start and the hellish hills waiting later on, but for a beginner runner like me that's easier said than done. Regardless of whether it translates into results, the least I can do is keep in mind: don't run according to how pumped up you feel at any given moment (at the start you get excited and mistakenly think you're in great shape), and keep your per-kilometer pace as steady as possible.

This applies not only to marathons but also to attracting customers online.

When you're fired up thinking "I have to bring in customers with my website or smartphone site somehow!", the moment your search ranking slips even a little you start worrying about everything: "Was changing the text here a bad idea?!" "Did this photo fall flat and push up the bounce rate?!" "Did a competitor pull something on us?!" — and you end up riding an emotional roller coaster.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with being fired up, and paying attention to all sorts of details while repeatedly testing and improving is extremely important.

However, unless you take a long-term view and judge carefully how to respond in each situation, you will wear yourself out and your ultimate goal will easily drift out of focus.

If along the way some advertising medium catches your interest more than your website or smartphone site, or an entirely different worry crops up, you may stop caring about the site and leave it neglected.

It's similar to how your motivation goes when running a long-distance marathon. When you're building the site, and right after it goes live, you're passionate about it and check on it constantly, but a few months later you lose interest and it goes untouched... If you get too sensitive to every little thing, your motivation drops faster and the site gets neglected sooner, I think.

Whether it's a marathon or online customer acquisition, once you decide to do it, keep your eyes on the goal and move forward while keeping an overall perspective.

To... myself!!!!!!!