Long Running

　　Nov. 3rd is a national holiday in Japan, which is designated to celebrate the birthday of Meiji Tennoh, who had been the Emperor of Japan from 1867 to 1912. On this holiday, though the weather wasn't good, I took on a shot at running 25 km without stopping, even if the speed would become slow. I wasn't confident about myself and asked a friend for the support to lead me at a constant pace because I'm going to attend a half-marathon on Dec. 7th. The time limit for the half-marathon is set to 3 hours. I could manage to attain the limit this time, but I didn't think that it was enough for the Ehime Marathon, which will be held in February. I have to complete it within 6 hours.
　　Though more than 3 months are left until the Ehime Marathon, there were several dozen runners on its route  and several signboards for runners were seen on the way, which indicated where you were on the route. I'll show you one of them at the bottom. As the fitness fad is growing more and more powerful in Japan, the number of city runners has increased. More than 20,000 people applied for the Ehime Marathon which is staged in a local city of Matsuyama City. The competition rate was nearly 3 times.

(Vocabulary)
take [have]a shot at　～に挑戦する
fad はやり, 流行
a passing fad  一過性の流行
city runner　市民ランナー