For Former Postdoc Kanato Goto, Running Is More Than a Hobby

When Kanato Goto wrapped up a 26.28-mile run on March 20, he knew it would be his final long jaunt around Princeton’s campus. He’d been going on marathon-length runs around town for about two years. That morning’s was his 537th.

A postdoctoral researcher in the University’s physics department, Goto was departing to join the faculty at Osaka University, where he is continuing his research on quantum gravity. He was also closing one chapter of a running streak that likely has few parallels around the world — and one that wore down around 30 pairs of running shoes across central New Jersey.

Goto, to put it in scientific language he might appreciate, runs an insane amount. To state the obvious: Most people who run marathons train for a single 26.2-mile race for months, if not years. There’s no centralized database of the world’s runners, but running more or less a marathon every day or two is rare enough that the accomplishment can garner serious attention, like maybe an NPR profile (see: the Belgian Hilde Dosogne this January). Goto’s name pops up in runners’ forums when athletes speculate about who on Earth might have run most in a given year, usually based on his prolific running log on Strava, the exercise-tracking platform. And he’s not exactly just strolling around: often he’s trotting below the 7-minute-per-mile range.

Goto’s practice is no lifelong obsession. Goto ran as a kid but only picked it up again in 2020, when, hoping to emerge from a depression, he tried jogging the three miles between his home and Kyoto University. He struggled at first but soon found the fresh air and exercise to be a “lifeline.” Before long he started stretching his runs, and by the end of 2021 he was up to 30 kilometers (about 18.6 miles) regularly, often alongside fellow members of a local running club. Soon, though, he also started running solo again, using the miles to clear his head and order his thoughts.

“Running became my way of expressing myself, confronting the world,” Goto, a lean and reserved 35-year-old, told PAW early this year over a Lion’s Mane chai on Witherspoon Street.

Things only intensified when he got to Princeton in the fall of 2022. For a while, Goto was running 30 kilometers as part of his daily morning routine. One day, however, a local runner noticed him in line for a coffee and invited him to a Thursday jogging group. New to town and eager for the community, Goto joined, and a friend suggested he enter a half-marathon race in town that November. Goto had never raced at that length, but he won, running at a 5:25-per-mile pace, beating the field of nearly 1,400 runners. He then figured he might as well try out full marathons, and by early 2023, they were part of his morning routine. He’d make sure to be asleep by midnight, then get up around 5 and be on the road by 5:30. By 9 or so he’d be done in time to shower and run the mile to his lab. (What you or I might consider recovery time is, for Goto, often more running time, with croissants sprinkled in between.)

“I am curious about ultramarathons. I’d love to challenge myself one day and see just how far and how fast I can go.” 

— Kanato Goto

It’s reasonable to seriously wonder about the motivations of an athlete like this. Goto runs year-round, even in Princeton’s dark and snowy winters. But in person, he likes to make clear that he’s doing this because it helps him think, because of the community it’s helped him build, and because it’s his routine now — not thanks to any fire to outrun rivals. “I don’t particularly enjoy the competitive aspect of racing, so I’ve never really trained specifically for it,” he said.

Then again, maybe this is easy to say for a guy who runs a marathon a day and still finished 42nd in a field of more than 55,000 at the New York City Marathon last November — it took him 2 hours and 22 minutes, or 5:27 per mile. “That said, I am curious about ultramarathons,” he added. “I’d love to challenge myself one day and see just how far and how fast I can go.”

Mostly, though, he used his time in Princeton to explore. His running, he said, has “become a way for me to stay in tune with myself and make each day feel more fulfilling.” But it’s also an easy way to simply “take in new scenery.” At first, Goto would plan his morning route, but as he came to know the area around the University he started just heading out and following the path ahead, often running along the Delaware & Raritan Canal. He calls it “the perfect place to get into a rhythm and focus without distractions.” It’s also where he liked to chase deer for fun. Sometimes he’d weave through the small towns nearby that he found especially charming, like Hopewell, and occasionally he’d reach the Pennsylvania border before heading back. At times, when his schedule was clear on weekend days, he’d run to New York City and Philadelphia.

That Thursday morning in March, Goto stopped at the running store on Nassau Street and posed for a photo with his running group. He told them they’d helped him understand the joy of running with friends, and that he hoped to keep tabs on their running from Japan.

Shortly before taking off, Goto calculated that he’d run about 25,000 miles since arriving in Princeton. That adds up to roughly what you’d travel if you went straight from Nassau Hall to Osaka and back, twice. Or, as he put it, it’s about the circumference of the Earth.

He completed his first marathon-length run in Japan less than a week later, and another the morning after that.