The Making of a Trail Runner
It is not one bit surprising that Fujio Miyachi’s 4-year-old son smiles widely while he runs, and says, “Hi, hi, thank you, thank you, gambatte, hi, arigato” to every single person he sees on the trail.
The young Miyachi, after all, is the product of his father (and his mother).
The older Miyachi, now 44, also runs with joy, but it wasn’t always so. “When I was young, [I was] not good at sports,” he explains. Growing up in central Tokyo, he says he was overweight and somehow, during every P.E. class, he’d have a stomachache or headache and need to be excused. “After class,” he smiles, “it’s gone.”
“When I was young, [I was] not good at sports.”
At the end of junior high school, Fujio decided that he just didn’t like sports, mostly because he didn’t think he was good at them. But he also had a realization that missing out on sports meant that maybe he’d also be missing out on what he describes as “lots of chance for joy.” So, he started running.
It wasn’t instant success for the teen. While his first couple of running events had him dangerously close to the cutoff time, with “the school bus waiting” behind him, a month’s-worth of training showed him that he could improve his speed. “I felt faster,” he says. “This was my first success. Something [was] changing in my mind…sports was fun for me.”
Not one to let “fun” go unnoticed, or unharnessed, Fujio capitalized on his newfound fitness and played soccer with classmates, which made him love school…so much so, that he became a teacher.
“This was my first success. Something [was] changing in my mind…sports was fun for me.”
Fujio would work through lunch at the restaurant owned by his parents’, then head to school “sometimes helping teaching, sometimes helping the Athletes’ Club,” he explains. One day, while looking for equipment for the school’s athletic department, he spotted a leaflet announcing a local trail race. He instantly thought: “I want to climb the mountain!”
In 2006, Fujio the trail runner was born.
He’s competed in many trail running races since, including a few XTERRA World Championship Trail Run races, where, he says, the indomitable Max King, who won the first four XTERRA Trail Run World Championships from 2008-2011, was (unfortunately) in his age group more often than not. He’s since moved from urban Tokyo to scenic Zushi near the coast of Japan, and loves running to the top of his local mountain to watch the sun set over the ocean.
And though he’s a top-notch competitor, it’s not his results that he’s most concerned about.
“I like the mood,” he says about trail running events. “People are very fun.”
“Of course, when we run, [we’re] very serious. But, after the finish, everyone is proud, all of us, of each other,” he says with a smile. But then again, Fujio says everything with a smile.
