Fuji Susono Half Marathon 2017

My running club Namban Rengo organise an annual trip to Gotemba to participate in the Fuji Susono Half Marathon and 10K, which is around mid-May. As my birthday is also around this time, I thought it would be good to go away on this overnighter to an onsen resort next to a brewery. Saturday saw a group of nearly 30 Nambaners travel from Tokyo to Gotemba in Shizuoka Prefecture. We took in a quick dip in the onsen waters before giving in to the temptations of some deliciously brewed beer at the resort brewery restaurant. It was clear that the group focus was more on the onsen, food and beer combo rather than athletic excellence, which suited my birthday mood.

The half marathon has a couple of thousand participants. The race began with 300 metres on a running track, before the course left the stadium with a 100 metres flat section to a main road. Then there was a right turn onto an uphill section up to the 5K point. That’s right, 4.4km of uphill running. I took it very easy for the first flat 400 metres of the race, and gradually moved through the field before reaching the 5km point. The course then turned left onto an undulating loop for the next 5km, then re-joined the earlier main road for another 3km of uphill running and then again taking in the same 5km of undulating roads.

The last couple of KM’s was downhill along the main road back to the stadium. I was really struggling with dehydration by this point and was expecting a fair few runners to come hurtling by as I was barely able to pick up my speed, but was surprised that only one runner did. As I entered the stadium and crossed the 300 metres to go line, I realised I could scrape under 1 hours 27 minutes if I ran the last part of the race in under a minute, so I managed to find some reserves from somewhere to inject a little increase in speed to finish in 1 hour 26 minutes 56 secs. This is 10 minutes slower than the half marathon PB I ran in January, but Fuji Susono does involve an awful lot of uphill running.

After I finished, I watched the half and 10K finishers coming in, unwisely getting sunburnt in the process. The 10K race is a straight 5K up hill and 5K downhill affair, on the same course as the half. Returning as a group to the onsen resort after the race, we could ease our aching muscles with a good soak in an open air onsen before reminiscing about the day’s events, aided by the excellent beer of the brewery.