japan running news

A rare bit of good news about the Japanese marathon circuit. On Aug. 12 the organizers of the Dec. 20 Hofu Yomiuri Marathon announced that they will go ahead with this year's race as planned with a limited field size. A second-tier elite race with a small mass-participation field, Hofu typically has around 3000 runners in a normal year. This year it will happen with a field size of between 400 and 450.

Hofu's invited elite field is usually a dozen Japan-based male athletes. Along with them, this year's race will include around 100 men and women with Japanese Corporate League Federation registration for 2020, up to 200 male and female residents of Yamaguchi prefecture, where the race takes place, who have cleared four hours in the marathon in the last three years, and up to 100 people who live, work, or go to school in the city of Hofu and who have cleared four hours since 2017. An important race on the para sports circuit, Hofu will also accept an unspecified number of IP…

https://worldathletics.org/news/press-releases/heat-air-quality-conditions-sapporo-tokyo-oly

On Aug. 11 Mizuno issued corrections to  a press release originally dated July 1 announcing that its all-white prototype model containing the new Mizuno Enerzy foam was being released under the name Wave Duel Neo. On its third page the updated press release corrected specifications for the shoes' sole thickness. The company apologized for any inconvenience caused by inaccurate specifications in the previous versions of the release.

On July 28, World Athletics announced new regulations governing the sole thickness of shoes used in track and field competition. The new rules specified the method by which sole thickness was to be measured. Previously, sole thickness was measured from the outsole to the midsole. The new World Athletics regulations specified that in addition to the outsole and midsole, the inner sole and insert were also to be included in measurements of thickness.

In accordance with the new regulations, Mizuno amended the specifications of both the Wave Duel Neo and W…

On Aug. 10 World Athletics announced that revised regulations on competition footwear that it had released on July 28 had already gone into effect on that date for track events. At the time of the new regulations' announcement WA had initially said that they would take effect on Dec. 1. The regulations effectively ban the use of thick-soled shoes Nike's dominant Vaporfly and Alphafly on the track and disallow any performances run in them.

WA's July 28 announcement of revised regulations was made in preparation for the postponed Tokyo Olympic Games. The new regulations specify the thickness of the sole that may be use in shoes for various disciplines, with field events apart from the triple jump and track events up to 400 m limited to 20 mm, the triple jump, track events 800 m and longer, and cross-country up to 22 mm. Nike's current models, which dominate the long distance market, have thicknesses of 36 mm for the Vaporfly and 39.5 mm for the Alphafly.



The revised reg…

2019 Skyrunner World Series men's champ Ruy Ueda won both days of the Tsumagoi Skyrun, a new trail race held in the mountains of Gunma over the weekend with 41 men and 11 women starting each race individually at 30-second intervals. In Saturday's Vertical Race, elite entrants had to do two runs up a 3.8 km trail with 600 m of climb starting at 1470 m elevation, with their final finishing ranking based on the combined times from both runs.

On his first attempt Ueda clocked 23:45, beating Mt. Kosha Vertical Kilometer winner Ryunosuke Omi by almost two minutes. On his second run he went even faster, clocking 23:01 to seal up 1st with a total time of 46:46. Omi was 2nd in 50:57, with Shoma Otagiri 3rd in 52:20.

Skyrunning national team member Yuri Yoshizumi took the women's race, one of the few people in the elite race not to negative split as she opened with an aggressive 30:49 only to follow up in 31:20 for a total time of 1:02:09. Mt. Kosha winner Takako Takamura was a dis…

Pre-corona, today would have been the men's marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, originally in Tokyo, then bumped off to Sapporo. For the sake of completion, for the third year in a row I ran most of the Tokyo course at the time that the race would have happened, starting at 6:00 a.m., taking temperature and humidity measurements every 30 minutes, and finishing back at the Olympic Stadium at 8:15 a.m. around the time that many of the top men would have been coming in.


Like last week's run at the original time of the women's marathon, conditions today wouldn't have been a problem for anyone who had done any kind of preparation to run a summertime marathon. Counter to the forecast, which predicted sunny skies the whole way, right before the schedule start time cloud cover rolled in over the city, helping to keep temperatures down. Humidity was high, but as per the forecast the temperature actually went down over the first 90 minutes. The humidity rose in relation to the cool…

One year before the Tokyo Olympics women's marathon, men's team member Yuma Hattori (26, Toyota) did a test run on the Olympic course in Sapporo. Hattori began at the Olympic marathon course's start point in Odori Park at 7:00 a.m., the same time the main event will kick off, looking focused, serious and silent. He seemed to concentrate on visualizing the event a year distant.

After the run, in a telephone interview Hattori's coach Toshinobu Sato commented, "There are a lot of corners and a lot of tight, narrow spots. We'll have to take care about getting tripped up and falling, especially if it's a slow first half."

Partway through the run Hattori's hat was blown off by strong winds caused by a cool low pressure system. "The weather is irregular," said Sato of the conditions in Sapporo. "If it's over 20˚C it'll be in the hot weather marathon category. It's not just the ordinary heat of midsummer. It's something dif…