Reminiscing: Life as a Mountaineer

June 19, 1983, Sunday

I woke up before sunrise and started to get ready for an early start. It was 6:00am when I took my first steps out of Ueki. Today was a 40km day, a distance that I covered fairly easily. I am now in Fukuoka prefecture, the prefecture that has hosted the Fukuoka Marathon. This race is recognized by many elite marathoners as the unofficial world marathon championship race. It has been held on the first Sunday of December for a number of decades. It really is a first-class event.

As I travel from town to town, I try to pick up on the new things that I've observed. I've noticed the slightly different speech patterns here. Hearing people speak Japanese with a different dialect tells me that I have traveled a good distance. The Kyushu dialect has many different forms, depending on where you are on the southern island. I know that I will be able to catch even more dialects as I continue running north.

Mr. Ushiyama of Kurume was waiting for me at the train station. The train stations have become my official starting and finishing points on many of my daily runs. I am not too excited about this arrangement, because train stations are not necessarily on the roads or parallel to the roads that I am running on. This means I have to run extra distance. It may not seem much for a single day to run an extra kilometer or two, but if you have to do it again to leave the town, and do it day after day, it adds up to a considerable distance. This has to be the way it's done, I guess. The support from the running clubs is worth the extra effort.

In addition to meeting with Mr. Ushiyama, I also spent some time with a Mr. Inaba, who has a daughter going to a high school in Canon City, Colorado. He heard that I had graduated from Western State (Go Mountaineers!) in Gunnison, so we chatted for a while about life on the Western Slope. Training at 7703 feet above sea level in Gunnison was a real challenge for me. The altitude, cold air of the Gunnison Valley, snow and icy conditions for much of the winter and early spring--these were new experiences for me. I didn't mind living in the small, rural community of Gunnison, though. Life in Gunnison and Canon City is nothing like life in Japan. I'm sure Mr. Inaba's daughter is getting a taste of the real America in the small Colorado town. We decided to get together again tomorrow to talk some more.

In the evening, I went to a Chinese restaurant for a Japanese-style Chinese dinner. The food was excellent. Back in my hotel room, I loaded up on bananas for the potassium to help prevent muscle cramps. The ones in the calves are extremely painful, especially when they come on in the middle of the night.

It's raining again tonight.