KitaKyushu Trail Run

An early morning start ( 0615 AM) saw us zoeffing by car to Kitakyushu where we parked at Yahata Station. 

From there we took the slow train to Saidosho Station.

That was a cute relaxed train ride...never in my life have i had seen the TRAIN DRIVER come and collect the train tickets!

Noriko and Yumi.

This pix is at Saidosho station.

Here we met up with Mr and Mrs Kohtake.

Pretty neh...

Last minute preps...always a shoe-lace or something in the pack to be adjusted.

And off we go....just 1 more pix. 

Hey see that, again seas of yellow and clouds of pink ... 

In the lead Mr Ohara, then Yumi, Noriko and 

Mr Kohtake ( aka Mr Mont Blanc...being the Mont Blanc Ultra Marathon veteran)

And that's why we came here...to Trail-Run all the way back to other side of this mountain range.

 (see Google Earth pix at the bottom.)

By times the going was tough..

Oops, more up-hill stuff

Even more..

But at the top...of course time for a snap-shot.

S**t,  more ....

Oh well, here we are at The Real Top. 

But Mr Mont Blanc always finds higher spots to be climbed.

As usual, during this trail-run Mr Kohtake took some side trips by himself to explore some more as us Non-MBers were just too slow...

 (When we were running down hill, Mr MB just "walked"...

and was even faster!)

Ha, going down, that's better stuff

And THIS is magic !!

Course directions are plenty and "easy"...

Only a few times we could see there was an other "life" out there.

And there is ALWAYS something RED at the end of the tunnel...

This time it came in a black can...

Boy, that tasted so good..

For the last down hill run we used...

The cable train.

According to the GPS we did something like 20+ K 

( Mr. MB 25).

It took us 7 hours, and it were magic hours. 

The company, the weather, the course...

Of course the bath afterwards was superrr..

By that time it was 7PM and i got a phone call from 

Sumie Maru: "Jaap, we have so much fish in the net, can you please come and help us?"

OK, ...at home, i swapped my clean clothes for my fishing outfit and helped with the konoshiro..

That night we finished "early": 1 AM

Guess what i did the next day...