At the end of February on Sunday 27^th,  Japan hosted its most prestigious event, the Tokyo Marathon. And this year the event celebrated its 5^th Anniversary. Winning a place in the race is well renowned as the world’s most highly sought after with nearing the 30,000 mark. So getting the chance to run in the race this year among the 30,000+ runners was an amazing surprise and honour.

Yet, just under 2 weeks after the race, for Japan, that happiness so quickly turned from the extremes of pleasure to the deepest depths of pain. When I take a look at the photos of that happy day again, photos of over 30,000 people all gathered together in one place at one time eager to achieve a fantastic goal, now I can’t help but think of those near 30,000 lives that were lost during the fateful day that the massive earthquake and tsunami came to steal away that peace and happiness.

I will always remember that Marathon of 2011 now and remember what it looks like to see so many people in one place at one time. 30,000 people is a truly huge number of people, whoever I looked on the day there were always more people to be seen, I real sea of people! Yet now of course the whole of Japan and the world lives with the knowledge that such a similar mass of people lost their lives, when on March 11^th 2011 that happiness finally ended.