Illustration by Alex Chen
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Usually, the finish line of a marathon is a battle against the clock. But on March 1, during the Tokyo Marathon – on a day that was 40 degrees warmer than the Canadian winter I had trained in – something unexpected carried me forward.
Along the course, strangers stood respectfully along the roadside, offering encouragement to a stream of runners stretching for kilometres through Tokyo. Their words, simple and intentional, reached across language barriers and carried far more meaning than I could have imagined. Way to go! Keep going! You’ve got this! Go, go, go!
Determined to follow the official rules, I ran without music, leaving no distraction from the pain – and it was very real. The pain was no longer isolated to tired muscles; it had spread through my joints, tendons and bones. By kilometre 28, I had already let go of my A, B and C goals and settled firmly into the “just finish this thing” camp. I knew I would cross the finish line eventually, but at that moment, my body had nothing left to give.
The mantras I usually relied on – pain is inevitable, suffering is optional – had failed me. In this race, it felt more like suffering was inevitable. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reframe the experience. Every step hurt.
As an English teacher in Southern Ontario, I’ve spent 26 years showing students the power of words. My 19 previous marathons had given me a treasury of them – mantras, phrases and quotes I could summon when things got hard. Usually, even in desperate moments, it wasn’t difficult to bring them forward: One kilometre at a time. Can you run one kilometre? Yes, you can.
But in Tokyo, when one kilometre felt like 10, even my most trusted words faltered.
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I was running at the harsh intersection of expectation and reality, where everything I had imagined collided with what actually was. This was my final World Major Marathon – my Sixth Star, the goal I had chased for more than a decade, the race I had fully trained for in 2020, meant to be my 20th and final marathon, carried on a pedestal in my heart. And it was falling far short of my expectations.
In my imagination, I would crush it. I would achieve a finishing time I could be proud of and cross the line feeling strong, capable and alive – euphoric even, the way most of my previous marathons had made me feel.
But the reality was something entirely different: painful, torturous, raw and gruelling.
And it wasn’t only the physical struggle. I had to let go of all the goals I had trained for through months of cold winter mornings – my daily maintenance exercises, the fitness classes I taught and attended, my regular yoga practice and the countless small sacrifices that had shaped my days, weeks and months.
The weight of not reaching the goal I had trained for pressed down on me, settling heavily on my almost 50-year-old, jet-lagged, utterly depleted body. For a moment, all those months of training and sacrifice felt as though they had been for nothing.
My body made its verdict clear – relentless and undeniable: I’m done. I have nothing left.
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At the brink of collapse, close to tears, a stranger’s voice broke through, carefully offering two simple words in English: Good job. Spoken across a language barrier, they carried more weight and meaning than any words I had ever heard from a native speaker.
Those two words bridged the gap between cultures. They said: We see you. We understand your struggle, your training, your discipline, your pain, your relentless drive to the finish. They understood that every runner had their own invisible battle to fight. And in that small act – the careful pronunciation of Good job – I realized that connection could be more powerful than any time on a clock.
Without fully realizing it, I kept moving forward on the encouragement of strangers. Tokyo had four volunteers for every runner – close to 40,000 runners and an astonishing 160,000 volunteers lining the 42.2-kilometre course, from the start corrals to the aid stations to the finish line. Before the race, I had been told the crowds were more reserved than those at other World Major Marathons – New York, Chicago, Boston, Berlin and London. In reality, the crowd surprised me: attentive, engaged and somehow impossibly present for every runner.
In the second half of the race, these small moments of connection began to shift my understanding of words. It isn’t always the most beautiful or eloquent language that moves us. Sometimes the simplest words, spoken at exactly the right moment, can carry us forward, connect us to others and help us endure even the deepest emotional and physical pain.
Good job. Who would have thought that two of the simplest words in the English language could hold such power?
Those two words were more than encouragement. They were acknowledgment, empathy and connection. In the middle of my hardest race – when my own words had failed me – they became a lifeline, the only language I needed to keep moving forward, step by step, toward the finish line and beyond.
Liza Crawford lives in Oakville, Ont.