The fact that Beijing Olympics men's marathon winner Samuel Wanjiru and previous Kenyan marathon medalists Erick Wainaina and Douglas Wakiihuri all trained under Japanese coaches has gotten a fair amount of press recently. Less well-known is the fact that Chinese runners Chunxiu Zhou, who won the bronze medal in the women's marathon in Beijing and the silver medal at last year's Osaka World Championships marathon, and Xiaolin Zhu, who was 4th in both the Beijing Olympics and Osaka World Championships marathons, are also trained by a Japanese coach, Shinya Takeuchi. I posted an interesting profile of Takeuchi on Aug. 14 and in light of the attention being paid to Wanjiru's Japanese development I thought it worthwhile to bring it back up. Click here to read Takeuchi's profile, including some discussion of Zhou and Zhu's training.
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
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