Skip to main content

Takeuchi for the Win at Kanagawa Half Marathon

by Brett Larner

Enjoying ideal weather conditions along with most of the rest of the country, the 34th Kanagawa Half Marathon saw one of the fastest winning times in its history.  Running alone through much of the race, sophomore Ikki Takeuchi rode the momentum of Aoyama Gakuin University's best-ever 5th-place finish at last month's Hakone Ekiden to win by a margin of 40 seconds  in 1:03:25, one of the fastest winning times in Kanagawa history and nearly a  minute faster than team ace Takehiro Deki's winning time last year.  Senshu University's Shunsuke Miyasaka won out in a tightly-grouped pack race for 2nd in 1:04:05, with Takeuchi's teammate Yuki Kawasaki 3rd in 1:04:12.

In the men's 10 km, Shoin University leader Aritaka Kajiwara won in a relatively conservative 30:10 over Kokugakuin University's Fumihiro Miyake.

2012 Kanagawa Half Marathon
Yokohama, 2/5/12

Men's Half Marathon
1. Ikki Takeuchi (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:03:25 - PB
2. Shunsuke Miyasaka (Senshu Univ.) - 1:04:05
3. Yuki Kawasaki (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:12
4. Sho Suminaka (Senshu Univ.) - 1:04:18
5. Shota Saito (Senshu Univ.) - 1:04:21
6. Yuma Morii (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:23 - PB
7. Hirotaka Ueno (Senshu Univ.) - 1:04:33
8. Takehiro Kobayashi (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:35
9. Koji Someya (Komazawa Univ.) - 1:04:35
10. Junichi Fukuzawa (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:35 - debut

Men's 10 km
1. Aritaka Kajiwara (SHoin Univ.) - 30:10
2. Fumihiro Miyake (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 30:46
3. Tomoaki Kimura (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 31.21

(c) 2012 Brett Larner
all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Heisei Mountaineering Stops Takigahara SDF Base From Scoring 10-Year Streak at Mount Fuji Ekiden

by Koichi Iwasa of DogsorCaravan On Aug. 2 the 51st Mount Fuji Ekiden took place, starting and finishing in Gotemba, Shizuoka and covering 11 stages up to the peak of Mount Fuji and back down. Teams of 6 runners tackle the tough course, each running handling one uphill and one downhill leg with the 6th runner reaching the peak before turning around to head back to the exchange zone where they started. The Heisei Mountaineering Club team took the overall win in 3:50:39, beating 9-time winner Takigahara SDF Base by 2:07 and stopping them from achieving a 10-year victory streak. The independent team division and SDF team division were separated in 2005, and this was the first time that the winning independent team outran the fastest SDF team to take the overall title. The roster that Heisei Mountaineering put together for this year's race raised eyebrows among everyone familiar with the Japanese trail running scene. Handling the 5th and 7th legs was Ruy Ueda , winner of the Fuji M...
Post a Comment
Read more

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...
54 comments
Read more

Komazawa University One Step Away From Perfect Season With Hakone Ekiden Day One Win

Already the course record-breaker at the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden this season, 2021 Hakone Ekiden champion Komazawa University came one step away from its first-ever triple crown of single-season ekiden wins as it won a highly competitive 2023 Hakone Ekiden Day One over defending champ Aoyama Gakuin University and last year's 6th placer Chuo University . Things got off to an unexpected start when Select Team runner Hayate Nitta of non-qualifier Ikuei University decided to take his one and only Hakone shot and run it up to his ability on the 21.3 km 1st leg even though the rest of the field opted to jog. At one point Nitta had a lead of almost a minute and a half, but as beautiful as it would have been for him to pull it off, Meiji University 's Shunpei Tomita and Komazawa's Kensuke Tsubura still managed to run him down in the final kilometer. Tomita took the stage win in 1:02:44, 1:02:08 half marathon pace vs. his 1:02:10 PB despite the slow s...
4 comments
Read more