Not just handsome guys and Tiffany necklaces！ Nagoya Women’s Marathon — Taiwanese women share touching stories

The proportion of female runners participating in marathon events has been growing year by year. Unlike male runners, women focus not only on performance but also on the “experience” during the run. As a result, how to run with attitude and grace has become one of the key factors for many women when signing up for races. There are also dads pushing strollers to cheer on their wives, or groups of sisters and friends joining together to challenge themselves and run their very first personal stories.

Half a century ago, during a time when gender equality was still lacking, running was actually considered a taboo for women, let alone participating in marathon races. Today, not only are women excelling in various sports, but there are also more and more running events dedicated solely to women. The Nagoya Women’s Marathon in Japan is a popular global women’s marathon event. Not only does the event arrange handsome stewards waiting at the finish line to place a Tiffany finisher necklace around the runners’ necks, but the full 42.195-kilometer marathon, with a time limit of 7 hours, is also seen by many Taiwanese female runners as a top choice for their first overseas marathon challenge, attracting nearly 18,000 participants.

Last year, the tour leader of the Nagoya Women’s Marathon, Little Bush, wore a suit and carried a briefcase while running nearly half the course with the participants. This year, she will continue to lead runners toward the finish line. (Photo provided by Lion Travel)

Little Bush, who led 120 Taiwanese women to participate in the Nagoya Women’s Marathon last year, shared that some runners had their entire families mobilized to cheer them on, with dads pushing strollers at the finish line. A team from National Taiwan University’s EMBA program also signed up, and they all arrived just before the cutoff time. Even he himself, in order to motivate the team, although unable to join the race, wore a suit and carried a briefcase to run almost half the course with the participants, and even competed with the race stewards in a “handsome-off” at the final finish line.

These running stories and the sense of achievement and camaraderie everyone shared can only be truly appreciated by experiencing them firsthand. To help more women discover the joy of exercise and the fulfillment of conquering oneself after completing a marathon, domestic travel companies have launched the campaign “Rise of Female Power！ Run Your First Story.” As long as female runners share their own running stories and a 3-minute video online before September 1, they could have the chance to run the Nagoya Marathon for free and share the joy of running with more women！