Skip to main content

Mara Yamauchi Defends Matsue Title

by Brett Larner

Beijing Olympics women's marathon 5th place finisher Mara Yamauchi (U.K.) outran Yuri Kano (Second Wind AC) for the second time this year to defend her Matsue Ladies Half Marathon title. Strong winds kept times slow overall, but Yamauchi won by nearly a minute in 1:10:09 with Kano 2nd in 1:11:02. Meijo University runners took 3rd through 5th place to sweep the National University Women's Half Marathon Championships and assure Meijo of solid representation on the national team at July's World Student Games.

The expected three-way battle up front did not take place when 2009 Osaka International Women's Marathon winner Yoko Shibui (Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) felt some discomfort in her left knee and opted to jog the 10 km race as a guest runner. As in February's Kagawa Marugame International Half Marathon Yamauchi went out hard, covering the first 5 km in 16:17 to Kano's 16:36 with a large pack led by Meijo runners Kikuyo Tsuzaki, Sayo Nomura and Seika Nishikawa running a more conservative 17:02. Yamauchi then continued to widen her lead, running each of her subsequent 5 km splits faster than Kano. Kano in turn widened her lead over the top pack through 15 km, but between 15 and 20 km she lost 11 seconds to the Meijo runners.

The final 1.0975 km were a game of chase, as Tsuzaki and Nomura continued to close on Kano, who likewise narrowed the gap to Yamauchi. In both cases the margins were too large, however, and the final finish order remained as it had been throughout much of the race. Yamauchi and Kano will next face each other in April's London Marathon. Tsuzaki will be selected for the World Student Games and is likely to be joined by at least Nomura.

Complete results for the 2009 Matsue Ladies Half Marathon are available in PDF format here. The race will be broadcast nationwide on Mar. 17 from 2:55 a.m. to 3:50 a.m. on Fuji TV. International viewers should be able to watch online through one of the sites listed here.

2009 Matsue Ladies Half Marathon
1. Mara Yamauchi (U.K.) - 1:10:09
2. Yuri Kano (Second Wind AC) - 1:11:02
3. Kikuyo Tsuzaki (Meijo Univ.) - 1:11:53
4. Sayo Nomura (Meijo Univ.) - 1:11:54
5. Seika Nishikawa (Meijo Univ.) - 1:12:04
6. Ayaka Ohira (Team Daihatsu) - 1:12:13
7. Satoko Uetani (Kobe Gakuin Univ.) - 1:12:29
8. Seika Iwamura (Team Daihatsu) - 1:12:30
9. Manami Takemori (Team Sysmex) - 1:12:34
10. Misato Tanaka (Team Sysmex) - 1:12:40

(c) 2009 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow! Mara is 36 years old and she won 2 half marathons. Her personal best for the marathon should be much faster than 2:25:03.

Most-Read This Week

Ninja Runner Yuka Ando Leads Japanese Women's Marathon Team in London: "I Want to Go For It"

Her form has been dubbed "ninja running." Both arms held straight down with almost no movement. That idiosyncratic style carried Yuka Ando , 23, to the fastest-ever marathon debut by a Japanese woman, 2:21:36, at March's Nagoya Women's Marathon to land at #4 on the all-time Japanese lists. All at once Ando found herself catapulted to the top level of women's marathoning, a candidate for Japan's next great marathoner. When she was younger Ando ran moving her arms like other runners, but she had a bad habit of moving robotically, her upper body and lower body not working in sync. The turning point came in 2014 when she joined Suzuki Hamamatsu AC . Working there with coach Masayuki Satouchi to eliminate the faults in her form, the pair arrived at the ninja running style that let her run relaxed. "Other people keep asking me, "Isn't it hard to run like that?" but for me it's comfortable," she said. The efficient form helped her mai

Yamaguchi 10th at United Airlines NYC Half - Weekend Overseas Results

2024 national cross-country champion Tomonori Yamaguchi was the top Japanese finisher in the men's race at the United Airlines NYC Half , taking 10th in 1:04:36. A 2nd-year at Waseda University , Yamaguchi was one of three collegiate runners running New York in the 11th year of JRN's development program collaboration between the Ageo City Half Marathon and the New York Road Runners, a program that has seen people like future half marathon and marathon NR breaker Yuta Shitara and Paris Olympic team member Akira Akasaki make their international debuts. Yamaguchi's Waseda teammate Taishi Ito started fast, going with the leaders through 5 km in 14:29 before losing touch. Hosei University senior Rei Matsunaga went through in 14:42 in his last race before joining the JR Higashi Nihon corporate team in April. Yamaguchi, who caught COVID after winning last month's National Cross-Country Championships, started more conservatively with a 15:11 first 5km. But where both Ito

Rui Aoki Wins National University Men's Half Marathon - Weekend Results

Yuka Ando 's win at the Nagoya Women's Marathon was the big news of the weekend, but there were other high-level races happening, even in Nagoya. Held in parallel with the marathon, the Nagoya City Half Marathon saw Australians Natalie Rule and Ed Goddard take easy wins by about 2.5 minutes each, Rule in 1:13:57 and Goddard in 1:04:01. The new Biwako Marathon also had a non-Japanese winner, China's Yousheng Guan scoring 1st in 2:14:58 with Japan's Hirohito Sugai next in 2:16:40. Mikiko Ota won the women's race in 2:50:44. The Shizuoka Marathon returned for its first running in five years, with club runner Shumpei Oda leading the top 7 men under 2:20 in 2:15:36. Women's winner Remi Tanaka ran 2:41:23, beating runner-up Ayumi Sano by exactly 7 minutes. And in Tokyo, Rui Aoki continued what has been a great season so far for Koku Gakuin University with a win at the National University Men's Half Marathon . Aoki and Hiro Konda of Chuo Gakuin Unive