japan running news

The Mar. 1 Tokyo Marathon has great fields this year, so let's get right to it. The women's field has 3 of last year's top 10, winner for the 2nd year in a row and Tokyo CR holder Sutume Asefa Kebede , 3rd-placer and 2025 Chicago winner Hawi Feysa , and 5th-placer and 2025 Berlin winner Rosemary Wanjiru , plus 2024 Valencia winner Megertu Alemu , 2025 Prague winner Bertukan Welde , 2024 Paris winner Mestawut Fikir , 2024 Osaka winner Waganesh Mekasha , former WR holder Brigid Kosgei , and a lot more. Japanese hopes pretty much go to all-time #7 Ai Hosoda , 2:20:31 in Berlin 2024 but who announced this month that she is retiring after Tokyo despite having qualified for the 2028 Olympic marathon trials with her 2:23:27 for 6th in Sydney last year. Other internationals include Canadian Malindi Elmore , American Sara Hall , a big Chinese group led by Yuyu Xia , Poland's Aleksandra Brzezińska and Australian Vanessa Wilson . The men's race has 5 of last year's top 1...

Earlier this month Aoyama Gakuin University broke its own course record to win the 102nd Hakone Ekiden , its 9th overall win and second three-peat. But in the background behind the brilliance of the almost unbeatable champion, one rookie on another team ran well in hopes of making the people back home who were still recovering from the Noto Hanto earthquake happy. To make that happen the same athlete left his position with one of the top corporations in the world to go to university with Hakone dreams. Let us tell you about Yamato Sugasaki , another Hakone Ekiden story. Born in Toyota, Aichi, Sugasaki played soccer through junior high school. But when he went to Toyota Kogaku Gijutsu H.S. , a private training school operated by the Toyota corporation, he switched to the track and field team. Sugasaki had watched the Hakone Ekiden on TV since he was a kid and decided that he wanted "to try something new," he says. His 3rd year of high school Sugsaki's times began to appr...

The last big women's race of championship ekiden season, the Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden saw 8 corporate teams square off against 19 of the top high school teams in the country over a 27.2 km race. For corporate leaguers that was divided into 5 legs, with the final leg, 10.4 km, split into two legs for the high school teams. Kairi Ikeno put National High School Ekiden 8th-placer Suma Gakuen H.S. out front on the 5.3 km First Stage, missing the CR by 2 seconds in 16:51. Only 17th at the Queens Ekiden corporate national championships, Kyocera was 5 seconds out front by the end of the 3.8 km Second Stage, but that didn't last long when Yume Yabutani ran a 12:35 CR on the 3.9 km Third Stage to put National High School Ekiden runner-up Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. in the overall lead by 23 seconds. That lead stayed exactly the same over the 3.8 km Fourth Stage, while from behind Denso , which had failed to qualify for the Queens Ekiden, closed to 15 seconds b...

In a lot of ways this was one of the more interesting races in National Men's Ekiden history. 2 of the country's current top high schoolers, Fukushima 's Yota Mashiko and Hyogo 's Haruki Niizuma , made sure the race got off right with a CR-pace attack from the beginning. Everyone went with them, but it quickly shook down to the 2 of them and Miyagi 's Hiroto Suzuki , a relatively unknown factor. Niizuma was fresh back from running last weekend's World XC Championships in Florida and showed the fatigue from that race and the travel, dropping off just before 5 km on the 7.0 km opening stage. Mashiko and Suzuki hit it in 13:37, a head-to-head battle between runners from the top 2 teams at December's National High School Ekiden . Mashiko, who ran the fastest-ever Japanese time on the opening leg for winner Gakuho Ishikawa H.S. there, had better credentials than Suzuki, 3rd on the third leg for runner-up Sendai Ikuei H.S. and opened up with 1 km to go. But ...

The Feb. 1 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon is coming in hot this year with what's got to be a shot at the 2:04:55 Japanese NR. Up front is the king of this year's Hakone Ekiden, collegiate marathon NR holder Asahi Kuroda of 2026 Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University . Last year at Beppu-Oita AGU's Hiroki Wakabayashi ran a 2:06:07 debut to break the collegiate marathon record. 3 weeks later Kuroda bettered that with a 2:06:05 in his debut in Osaka. He comes in fresh off the greatest run in Hakone history, taking 2 minutes off Wakabayashi's CR for the massive uphill Fifth Stage in a run that Letsrun.com estimated was worth a 57:30-58:00 half marathon. Make of that what you will, if you accept 58:00 that's worth sub-2:02 in the marathon. Call it 59:00 and you're still talking sub-2:04. Can he possibly live up to the hype? Beppu-Oita is basically not that kind of race, but looking at the rest of the front end of the field they've got to be thinking that way. 2:...

The elite field has been announced for the Feb. 1 Kagawa Marugame International Half Marathon . The women's race has a good matchup up front between 2 of the stars of last year's race, Dolphine Omare and Isobel Batt-Doyle , and British duo Eilish McColgan and Charlotte Purdue . The current #1 woman in Japanese collegiate athletics, Daito Bunka University 's Sarah Wanjiru , and sub-15 5000 m runner Susan Kamotho who has yet to run even 10000 m are interesting debuts, with Japanese hopes pretty much resting on Tokyo World Championships marathon team members Yuka Ando and Kana Kobayashi . Last year's runner-up Emmanuel Maru is the favorite in the men's race, but right behind him there's a tasty duel between collegiate half marathon record co-holders Richard Etir and Kotaro Shinohara . Past Fukuoka International Marathon winner Sondre Moen , Dennis Kipruto , Yuma Nishizawa and Josphat Ledama Kisaisa round out the front end of the field. The relocation of th...

The Osaka International Women's Marathon 's 45th running is less than 2 weeks away on Jan. 25. Sub-2:20 trio Workenesh Edesa , Stella Chesang and Bedatu Hirpa make up the international component of the race, with veterans Mizuki Matsuda and Mao Uesugi the only ones close to them on paper, Matsuda with a 2:20:42 in Berlin 2 years ago and Uesugi 2:22:11 in Nagoya last year. Bringing the most upside to the race is Mizuki Nishimura , the next big thing from the Tenmaya corporate team that NR holder Honami Maeda calls home. Nishimura set a 1:41:42 CR at the Kumanichi 30 km last February, then tested the waters with a 2:25:54 debut for the win at the Hofu Yomiuri Marathon at the beginning of December. It's a quick turnaround since then, but chances are pretty good that she'll be the one to watch for the home crowd. There's also an interesting debut in the works from Mikuni Yada , a track runner who won bronze at last summer's Asian Championships with a 31:12....