Skip to main content

Kashiwabara Sets Stage Record as Team Honda Wins 64th Towada Hachimantai Ekiden

by Brett Larner

A midsummer tuneup for corporate, university and amateur teams training in northern Japan to escape the heat and humidity, the Towada Hachimantai Ekiden saw its 64th running on Aug. 7.  Team Honda, led by 2010 Tokyo Marathon winner Masakazu Fujiwara, took the team title as it covered the five stage, 73.8 km course in 3:48:38.

Honda started the race in 3rd and gradually worked its way to within 21 seconds of the lead by the end of Fujiwara's stage second-best run on the 16. 3 km Third Stage.  Fourth Stage runner Minoru Ikebe ran a stage best time to overtake leader Nihon University for 1st.  Honda anchor Takashi Toyoda was only sixth-fastest on the brutal uphill Fifth Stage but still held on for the win after Nihon's anchor Shingo Hayashi struggled and finished 12th on stage time.

Hayashi in turn barely held off Toyo University's brilliant uphill specialist Ryuji Kashiwabara, who took Toyo from 8th to 3rd and from nearly five minutes off the lead to less than two with a stage record 49:01.  It was senior Kashiwabara's best run this year after months of injury followed by the stress of his hometown of Iwaki, Fukushima being badly affected by March's disasters.  His result bodes well for Toyo in the upcoming fall ekiden season leading to his final run at the Hakone Ekiden in January.

64th Towada Hachimantai Ekiden - Top Results
Kazuno, Akita, 8/7/11
click here for complete results
Stage Best Results
First Stage (13.6 km) - Yusuke Sato (Nihon Univ. A) - 41:04
Second Stage (12.4 km) - Naohiro Domoto (Nihon Univ. A) - 37:39
Third Stage (16.3 km) - Josephat Ndambiri (Kenya/Team Komori Corp.) - 47:19
Fourth Stage (16.4 km) - Minoru Ikebe (Team Honda) - 49:44
Fifth Stage (14. 1 km uphill) - Ryuji Kashiwabara (Toyo Univ. A) - 49:01 - CR

Top Team Results - Five Stages, 73.8 km
1. Team Honda - 3:48:38
2. Nihon Univ. A - 3:50:09
3. Toyo Univ. A - 3:50:28
4. Team Yachiyo Kogyo - 3:50:32
5. Team Komori Corp. - 3:51:38
6. Team JR Higashi Nihon - 3:52:06
7. Tamagawa AC - 3:52:10
8. Team Nissin Shokuhin - 3:52:38
9. Kokushikan Univ. A - 3:57:06
10. Team Press Kogyo - 3:57:43

(c) 2011 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Hakone Champ AGU Hits 50 km a Day in Spring Break Training Camp

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...
1 comment
Read more

Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 Hakone Ekiden

The Hakone Ekiden is the world's biggest road race, 2 days of road relay action with Japan's 20 best university teams racing 10 half marathon-scale legs from central Tokyo to the mountains east of Mount Fuji and back. The level just keeps going higher and higher , hitting the point this year where there are teams with 10-runner averages of 13:33.10 for 5000 m, 27:55.98 for 10000 m, and 1:01:20 for the half marathon. It's never been better, and with great weather in the forecast it's safe to say this could be one of the best races in Hakone's 102-year history, especially on Day One. If you've seen it then you know NTV's live broadcast is the best sports broadcast in the world, with the pre-race show kicking off at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on the 2nd and 3rd and the race starting at 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you've got a VPN you should be able to watch it on TVer starting at 7:50 a.m. on the 2nd , and again at 7:50 a.m. on the 3rd . There's even a 2-hour high...
3 comments
Read more

70th Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden

The 70th running of the Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden happened over the start of the Golden Week holidays, a 3-day, 29-leg race covering 306.9 km around the northern prefecture of Yamagata. There used to be a lot more of these races where people from the prefecture run for their hometown teams on a Tour de Whatever prefecture or area it happens to be held in, but Yamagata's is one of the few to have survived this long. And amazingly enough, local broadcaster YBC live streamed the entire thing on Youtube. There aren't many corporate teams in the mostly rural area, so runners from the ND Software corporate team played a heavy role, its 2 best runners Masato Arao and Ryoma Takeuchi winning their stages on Day 2 with Takeuchi doubling to anchor the Kita-Murayama team to an overall 5th-place finish, and Koichi Shoji breaking the 2nd leg CR on Day 1 and winning the 2nd-to-last stage on Day 3 to play a key role in the Yamagata city team taking the overall win in 16:06:51, 3:09/km ...
1 comment
Read more