About this race
This PSS Imperial Palace Health Running event starts and finishes near the clock tower inside Sakuradamon, at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. It is a morning running event with 5km, 10km, 20km, and 20km relay options, and the organizer treats it partly like a practice session rather than a strict race. The solo races cost 1,000 yen, the relay costs 4,000 yen, and the listed field size is small to mid-sized, around 100 to 499 runners.
The route uses repeated Imperial Palace laps, so runners can focus on pacing and lap times, which past participants say makes it useful for marathon training or checking current fitness. The tone is unusually loose: the organizer calls it “Japan’s most relaxed race,” allows late arrivals, same-day entries, event changes on the day, and even improvised distances such as 15km. There are still cutoffs, though: 20km runners need to be on the fourth lap by 10:15 AM, and runners who miss a cutoff have the distance they completed recorded as their result. Timing is manual, all participants receive awards, and participation items include a sports drink, an izakaya meal ticket, and a magnetic chip.
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