Yoko Shibui of Japan, the seventh fastest women’s marathon runner of all time, had completed a successful first half of her 2-months-long training camp in Flagstaff and returned to Japan to participate in Sapporo Half Marathon this weekend as a part of her preparation for Berlin World Championships in August. Shibui and 2 other training 
partners from Mitsui Sumitomo team, coached by Shigeharu Watanabe (Coach Nabe), had stayed at Greg McMillan’s sister’s place in Flagstaff for the entire month of June, getting her body ready for final tune-up for the marathon including participating in San Francisco marathon on July 26th.
She had been mainly just “jogging” after her victory at Osaka Ladies Marathon in January, using the final Yokohama International Women’s Ekiden’s anchor leg of 5.195km in 16:29 as her speed-training (“We just did a touch-up work in the final week,” Coach Nabe said). This is the first time I actually get to meet Yoko in person – I’ve been with her team-mate, Reiko Tosa, several times in the past through Mitsui’s old coach, Hideo Suzuki, at 2006 Boston marathon where Reiko finished third, at 2006 Tokyo women's marathon where Reiko won, as well as her training camp in Boulder before Beijing Olympics. While Reiko is the steady quiet one, Yoko is an outgoing “firecracker” character. To me, one word to describe her would be “spunk” (I had a heck of a time explaining to Yoko what “spunk” means because, she claimed, it sounds rather like “skunk”!). She is a “spice”, cayenne pepper in your dish, and I had always been a big fan of hers for her personalities as well as her performances. Her marathon debut was sensational (“spicy”); a 2:23:11, the fastest debut marathon time (at the time, which was later broken by Paula Radcliffe) at the age of 21. She would later finish 4th in the World Championships marathon in Edmonton where her team-mate, Reiko, took the silver medal.
After Japan’s Naoko Takahashi claimed the Japan’s first Olympic marathon gold medal for women in Sydney in 2000; Yoko became the one to watch for Athens Olympics. She even popularized a word “Ateneru (=I will Athens it)” by verbalizing the noun “Athens”. She’s a speedster and set the national record for 10,000m in 2002, beating Deena Kaster (then Drossin), with the time of 30:48 at Cardinal Invitational followed by then a PR performance in Chicago with 2:21:22. She was ready to crack a fast one at the Olympic trial race in Osaka in 2004. However, the race began with a cat-and-mouse tactical race with an excruciatingly slow 19+-minute opening 5k. She completely lost her own rhythm and sank badly to the 9th place with 2:33. Disappointed, the best she could do was to watch another Japanese, Mizuki Noguchi, claiming the gold medal, the second Japanese victory and the 4th Japanese medal in a row since 1992, on TV. Erasing that nightmare, she flew to Germany for Berlin Marathon in September and did “crack a fast one” with then the third fastest time in history, 2:19:41, also then the Japan’s national record, bettering Takahashi’s history’s first sub 2:20 marathon for women. Then she went into the four and a half years of marathon-victory drought – for four and a half years, 5 marathons, she did not win a single marathon.
At 2005 Nagoya marathon, which served as one of the trial races for Helsinki World Championships, she finished 7th in 2:27. At 2007 Osaka marathon, the trial race for the up-coming Osaka World Championships, she was distance 10th place with one of the slowest times of her career, 2:34. Meanwhile, her team-mate, and a very close personal friend of hers, Reiko Tosa, beat Naoko Takahashi 3 months earlier at 2006 Tokyo marathon in the bone-chilling drizzling rain and claimed the spot for Osaka World Championships marathon team and, at Osaka WC, Reiko’s gutsy third-place performance won her the Olympic team berth for Beijing. For the
desperate final attempt for the Beijing Olympic marathon team spot, at 2007 Tokyo marathon, Yoko sank to 7th with 2:34 again. Being a speedster, she would take off fast in the first half, leading the pack. But then she faded badly in the final closing stage. But, no matter how much she slowed, no matter how badly she’s hurting, sometimes almost limping and dragging her non-responding legs, Yoko never quit the race. Once she started the race, she always crossed the finish line. Spectators and viewers, myself included, could not help but cheer for her when you see her determined to finish, dragging her ceased up legs, step by excruciatingly slow step, against their (legs’) will… “Shibui crashed and burnt again…” some heartless audience might have criticized her front-running strategy. But Yoko kept on running for none other than herself. “Something might open up the door if I win one again…,” she said after finishing yet another crash-and-burn 4th place at Tokyo last November. “There are 2 more trials (Osaka in January and Nagoya in March)… I will run until I am victorious again…,” she announced. At Osaka marathon 69 days later, she demonstrated a mature, patient, race-to-win pattern of a true champion and sat in the lead pack until 30k before unleashing 16:11 split between 30 and 35k and comfortably destroyed the rest of the field. With that, “something” did open up…
I stayed with the team Mitsui in Flagstaff for a week – the first week of their stay in Arizona. Only the second day at 7000+ feet altitude, she did an “easy” 20k around the 6k loop around the neighborhood. Greg McMillan, the altitude native now, was a bit surprised. “I’ve done enough camps at Kunming in China so it really doesn’t bother me,” Yoko simply shrugged her shoulders. It was fairly easy effort at about 4:15 per kilometer pace. While I was still in there, they would do 20 X 200m at good clip but not so hard (about 40 seconds each) at NAU track. That was just to get a good leg turn-
over rhythm for the following day’s point workout – 2 X 20k in AM and PM. It would still not be a hard effort yet; though Coach Nabe let girls open up in the final 3k of the evening 20k run along beautiful gradually undulating Lake Mary course. They would go on and run a 30k and then followed by a 40k run. I would receive an e-mail from Yoko and she says her body is screaming now! I talked to Coach Nabe this morning and he was quite happy how she pushed her body almost to the limit in the first half of the camp. “This would leave her with a very good rhythm into the second half of the camp,” he says. He said that he wouldn’t not expect much from Yoko in this weekend’s Sapporo half marathon. “I’d be more interested in what this race would do for her in the second half of the camp,” he said.
The night before I was to leave with “Tuck” Takaseki (team manager) – at 3AM, I might add (!), because Tuck’s flight was at 7:30AM –, Yoko and I stepped outside the house to check out what seemed to 
be the full moon in the crispy clear sky at highland of Flagstaff. I told her about a part of send-away speech at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic hockey match against unbeaten Russian team from the late coach Herb Brooks in the Disney movie, “Miracle”. “…Great moments are born from great opportunities…that’s what you have tonight…that’s what you’ve earned! THIS is YOUR time; now go out and take it!” Through all the disappointing and heart-breaking races, Yoko Shibui had “earned” and will have this opportunity comes August in Berlin.
Shibui's image at Osaka Ladies Marathon: from IAAF