japan running news

Yesterday the national corporate federation JITA announced major changes to the New Year Ekiden, the corporate men's national championship race around which the entire year is structured. Other top-tier ekidens like the Hakone Ekiden, the National University Men's and Women's Ekidens, and the Queens Ekiden corporate women's national championships all have a seeded bracket, allowing top-placing teams to auto-qualify for the following year's race and exempting them from running in the yosenkai qualifying races the next season. This frees up the best of the best and lets them do other things, whether it's the Izumo Ekiden for university men, overseas fall marathons for women, or whatever. The JITA has stubbornly refused to put a seeded bracket into the New Year Ekiden over the years, meaning every corporate men's team has to run one of the regional corporate ekidens that took place the last two weekends in order to get back to the national race, even the prev...

Following last weekend's East Japan and Kyushu Region corporate ekidens , qualification for the New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship wrapped up Sunday with 3 other qualifying races covering 4 corporate regions. As in East Japan and Kyushu, one extra slot per region was available in honor of the New Year Ekiden's 70th running to the top team finishing outside the designated number of qualifying spots in that region as long as the they finished within 10 minutes of the last team in the regular qualifying bracket. In the combined Chubu and Hokuriku Region race, Toyota Boshoku took over the lead on the 3rd leg and never looked back, leading the 6 qualifying teams by 57 seconds in 3:54:00 for the 7-leg, 80.5 km course. Just over 2 minutes back from 6th finisher NTN , the Toenec team scored the special qualification slot in 4:00:35 for 7th. Perennial top Hokuriku placer YKK had a relatively narrow win over Sekino Kosan 4:00:12 to 4:01:00, both teams going on t...

A record-breaking number of participants ran the Fukuoka Marathon yesterday. In its 12th edition, the mass-participation race welcomed 15,102 participants, the most in its history, and included a 42.195 km full marathon, 5.2 km fun run and 5.2 km wheelchair race. The race started at 8:20 a.m. at Tenjin in central Fukuoka. Following a seaside course out of downtown Fukuoka it finished at Koryu Plaza in Itoshima. Despite wet conditions 96.3% of starters finished the race. Kentaro Nakamoto , head coach of the Fukuoka-based Yasukawa Denki corporate team and a 2012 Olympian, won the men's race in 2:23:21. Amateur Kanami Shigemoto won the women's race in 2:55:47, with Koki Takemura taking the wheelchair title in 11:32. source articles: https://www.nishinippon.co.jp/item/1421322/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZknZZD16kE translated and edited by Brett Larner

It's the point in the season where Hakone Ekiden-bound university coaches are farming out their squads to half marathons to sort through the contenders to make their 16-runner Hakone entry rosters. Next weekend's Ageo City Half Marathon is the biggest of them, but two key races happened today. In rainy conditions at the Setagaya 246 Half in Tokyo, Shoki Yamaguchi (Soka Univ.) won a sprint finish against sub-60 man Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon), Kuira overtaking Yamaguchi after Yamaguchi had pulled away over the last km but Yamaguchi fighting back on the track. Both clocked 1:01:46, but Yamaguchi succeeded in snagging the win away from Kuira right before the line. In 3rd, Aito Sato led a massive group from 2025 Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University with a PB of 1:01:57 for 3rd. 5 other AGU runner were under 63 minutes, all but one breaking 62:30 and most in PBs, with Kotaro Suzuki (Chuo Univ.), 8th in 1:02:28, and Yota Aoteki (Hosei Univ.), 10th in 1:02:46 breaking up AGU...

Everything in Japanese marathoning is already about qualifying for the MGC Race, Japan's trials race for the L.A. Olympics. Scheduled the same day as the Fukuoka International Marathon, the Dec. 7 Hofu Yomiuri Marathon counts the same weight as Fukuoka, Tokyo and Osaka in men's qualification, with trials spots up to be had by the first 6 Japanese men under 2:09:00 and the first Japanese woman under 2:27:00. The only real contender to do that among the women is Mizuki Nishimura , running her first marathon off a 1:41:42 CR at the Kumanichi 30k in February. Given the Tenmaya corporate team's track record of success in the marathon, including the current women's NR of 2:18:59, her chances are pretty good. Ayumi Morita ran a 2:31:38 PB in Tokyo last year, but it's a big jump for her to get down to 2:26 and it'll mostly be a question of whether Nishimura executes the same way she did at Kumanichi. For men there are 6 under 2:09:00 in the last 3 years, with Ryoma T...

The Kobe Marathon happens Nov. 16 with a tweaked course that cuts out the unpopular bridge out to the finish, a change organizers are touting as making it a way faster course. There are some pretty good quality African athletes in the field, with top 2 men Abay Alemu and Elisha Rotich both in the 2:06:50 range in races last year, Alemu with a 2:06:50 for 2nd in Wuxi and Rotich 2:06:54 for 3rd in Paris, and Jackline Chelal dominating the women's field with a 2:20:29 win in Seville in 2023. Kobe is a shortcut for qualification for the MGC Race L.A. Olympic marathon trials, with one spot available to the top Japanese man if under 2:09:00 and the top Japanese woman if under 2:27:00. Only one athlete who looks capable of doing that has taken the bait, Masato Arao doubling back from a 2:07:42 for 6th at August's Sydney Marathon, a breakthrough run that wasn't enough for the JAAF to deign to let him into the Olympic trials. Yuma Morii , Hiromasa Kumahashi and Akihiro Kaneko ...

5th at last year's National High School Ekiden boys' race, Fukushima's Gakuho Ishikawa H.S. has withdrawn its boys' and girls' team from the Nov. 6 Tohoku Region Ekiden Championships in Fukushima. A school spokesperson commented, "We made this decision based on the likelihood of our students coming into contact with bears in the city when out running in the morning." The Akita Athletics Association had already made an announcement on its website on Oct. 31 that due to the high number of bear encounters within the city of Akita this year , the ekiden would be held on a track instead of as a road race. Organizers said that they are leaving it up to each individual school whether to participate, and that they will accept schools choosing not to participate due to safety concerns. The Gakuho Ishikawa boys and girls both won the Fukushima Prefecture High School Ekiden in October, earning them places at the Tohoku regional meet and December's National High...