Senior Japanese Teams Have Weak Showing at World XC (updated)

by Brett Larner

update: Reader Rich T. sent these photos he took at the World XC Championships last weekend. Thank you. Rich's complete set of photos can be found here.

The Japanese junior women's team trails the Kenyan and Ethiopian teams.

The senior Japanese men's and women's teams had poor showings at Sunday's World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland, while the two junior teams fared more respectably.

The senior men's team finished 13th of 15 teams, beating only the teams from Canada and Botswana. Team aces Makoto Tobimatsu and Satoru Kitamura both had bad runs, finishing 4th and 6th on the team of 8 in 106th and 121st place respectively. The most experienced XC runner on the team, Yoshitaka Iwamizu, showed that experience matters as he led the team with his 89th place finish. The talented university runner Yuki Sato made up for his lackluster performances in the Chiba and Fukuoka qualification races by finishing 2nd on the team in 94th place. Full senior men's results are here.

Aimi Horikoshi

Like the senior men, the senior women's team finished near the bottom of the field, placing 10th of 12 teams ahead of Ireland and Canada. Again like the men's team, the women's ace runners Kazuka Wakatsuki and Aya Manome ran badly, finishing 5th and 6th on the team of 6. Experience also mattered here, as veteran Aimi Horikoshi was 2nd on the team just 1 place back from top Japanese finisher Yuko Nohara's 46th place result. Senior women's team results can be found here.

The junior men finished a strong 4th behind Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda despite have no runners anywhere near the top 10. The team was led by rookie Hirotaka Tamura's 20th place finish, while once again the ace team member ran badly. This time it was Akinobu Murasawa, 5th on the team of 6 with a 37th place finish. Murasawa's teammate at Saku Chosei High School, Kenta Chiba, was 6th on the team in 44th place despite being ranked 2nd going into the race. Click here for junior men's results.

Yukino Ninomiya coming down the hill en route to finishing 10th.

Yukino Ninomiya

The junior women had the best results of the day, finishing 3rd of 8 teams. Like Tamura in the junior men's race, first-timer Yukino Ninomiya led the way with a 10th place finish. 2nd on the team in 14th place was Atsuko Matsumura, the only ace member of any of the Japanese teams to have a good showing. Fellow star runner Risa Takenaka was 5th on the team, landing in 26th place overall. Junior women's team results are here.

Atsuko Matsumura

Ayaka Mori

19-Yr-Old Munakata Breaks Miura's U20 NR to Win Ageo City Half Marathon

The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin

10000 m NR Attempt In the Works Saturday at Hachioji Long Distance - Streaming and Preview

There are a bunch of other time trial meets this weekend and next, but Saturday's Hachioji Long Distance is the last big meet for Japanese men, 8 heats of Wavelight-paced 10000 m finely graded from target times of 28:50 down to 26:59 for the fastest heat. Heat 6 at 17:55 local time is effectively the B-race, with 35 Japan-based Kenyans targeting 27:10 at the front end, and in a lot of cases a spot on their teams at the New Year Ekiden national championship on Jan. 1. Corporate teams are only allowed to field one non-Japanese athlete in the New Year Ekiden, and only on its shortest stage, and getting to that has a big impact on African athletes' contracts and renewal prospects. Toyota Boshoku , Yasukawa Denki , Chugoku Denryoku , Aisan Kogyo , JR Higashi Nihon , Subaru and 2024 national champion Toyota are all fielding two Kenyans, and Aichi Seiko three. For people like Toyota's Felix Korir and Samuel Kibathi , getting as close to the 27:10 target time as they can and

Ageo City Half Marathon Preview and Streaming

This weekend's big race is the Ageo City Half Marathon , the next stop on the collegiate men's circuit. Most of the universities bound for the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden use Ageo to thin down the list of contenders for their final Hakone rosters, and with JRN's development program that sends the first two Japanese collegiate finishers in Ageo to the United Airlines NYC Half every year a lot of coaches put in some of their A-listers too. That gives Ageo legendary depth and fast front-end speed, with a 1:00:47 course record last year from Kenyan corporate leaguer Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon) and the top 26 all clearing 63 minutes. Since a lot of programs just enter everybody on their rosters you never really know who on the entry list is actually going to show up, but if even a quarter of the people at the top end of this year's list run it'll be a great race, even if conditions are looking likely to be a bit warmer than ideal. Chuo Gakuin University 's Reishi Yoshi

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