The weekend after we returned to Japan we ran in the Saiko road race. We met a group of fellow runners at a nearby subway station and loaded into our van. We actually had two runners who were visiting Japan from the US and Argentina join us for the race. Both came with their spouses and it was a nice group of international runners. A few hours later, we arrived in town and headed to the race area to pick up our numbers. We then piled back into the van and headed to our minshuku.
Minshuku are Japanese style B&B's, which are usually family operated. They are very similar to ryokan but are usually more modest and without the attentive service
(basically, you make your own bed and put it away in the morning).
Back to the race! There are five lakes surrounding Mount Fuji and The Saiko (West lake) is one of them. Unfortunately, Fuji-san was covered in clouds all weekend so we didn't really get a good look. You can kind of see the peak in the picture above.
Our minshuku was amazing because the start of the race was literally at the end of our driveway. The picture of all of us (posted below) was taken in the driveway. Our host served breakfast at the painfully early time of 6:00 (she was volunteering at a water stop and needed to get to her post on time!). We ate our asa gohan (morning rice) and went back to sleep until about 8am. Not too bad.
The 6 miles were a lot of fun and it was even better when it was over. We both ran hard and finished happy; what more can you ask for? Chris took some self-portrait/action shots while running.
