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| Fuji Oshino Kogen Trail Race |
What was I thinking when I signed up to run 14 miles in the mountains??? I have no idea! But... after all is said and done, I'm very glad I did and it was a rare experience!
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| The mountain side we ran through |
Kim Gerber and I headed up to Oshino, Japan, a little village surrounding Mt Fuji and it's several lakes. We took a bus up there and was dropped off at the race site which was in the middle of nowhere. Just mountains and little Japanese shacks surrounding us. After checking in and checking out the race expo (it's exactly the same as race expos in the States), we walked to our hotel, which was supposed to be a 5 minute walk. Not quite! We quickly learned we were in rural Japan, where most signs are in kanji, including hotel signs. Oh yea, and did I mention, it was hard enough to tell the difference between the guest houses (hotels) and the regular houses. Needless to say, we finally walked into a house we figured might be our hotel and these two sweet little ladies greeted us, sat us into the tatami room, and brought us coffee and snacks; still not confirming we were at the right place or not. I guess there was a little something called "a major language barrier" there!
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| Rice-patties in Japan countryside |
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| Oshino-Hakkai |
Once we finally figured out we were in the right place, we went out back to walk around for a bit before it was time for dinner. We stumbled upon the quaint little town of Oshino Hakkai, Japan, that was just out the back door of our guest house. It is known for it's eight ponds surrounding Mt Fuji (yes, this different from the 5 lakes). The town was extremely cute and had little food stands that we had to try sweet potato and egg fries at. They weren't what we were expecting, but good none the less! After walking around for a while, we headed back to the guest house to have dinner. It turned out that everyone staying there were running the race the next morning. We all enjoyed the homemade dinner by the two Japanese owners, sitting at communal tables on tatami mats. What a unique pre-race experience! Oh, and did I mention, the dinner was a huge spread of Japanese food of shrimp tempura, soba noodles, salad, a pork stir-fry kind of thing that cooked over our own flame, tofu, rice and Japanese soup. Delicious!
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| Kim and I at the start line |
RACE DAY! Perfect running weather on a crisp Sunday morning! The course was awesome but a lot more elevation changes than I was expecting. It included some parts where we had to use ropes to either go up or down and some where we had to stop and wait to go single-file because it was so steep. After the 14 miles of running/hiking, my whole body was sore, but it was completely worth it for the views! We had some amazing views of Mt. Fuji and the town of Oshino on one side and Lake Yamanakako on the other side. The pictures don't do it justice!
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