Skip to main content

Shitaraless Honda Wins East Japan Corporate Ekiden

Qualification for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships got underway on the Nov. 3 holiday in Japan's most competitive region, East Japan, with the 58th East Japan Corporate Men's Ekiden Championships. Running without half marathon national record holder Yuta Shitara, 2015 winner Honda returned to the top with an exciting anchor stage win in 3:47:55 for the 7-stage, 77.5 km course.

The Hitachi Butsuryu team's leading man Yuki Muta got them off to a good start on the opening stage, but a 1-2 punch from DeNA's Kenta Murozuka and Bedan Karoki put DeNA 20 seconds ahead of the early leaders. 7th on the First Stage, Honda worked its way up to 3rd by the end of the Third Stage just a second behind Hitachi Butsuryu.

Honda moved into 2nd on the next stage, but its gap to leader DeNA stayed steady at 21 seconds. Fujitsu passed Hitachi Butsuryu for 3rd thanks to a stage win from Ken Yokote, and a new stage record of 22:52 for the 7.8 km Fifth Stage from Yusuke Sato put Fujitsu ahead of Honda and 21 seconds behind DeNA. In his debut with the Hitachi Butsuryu team Keita Shitara, twin brother of Honda's Shitara, also broke the Fifth Stage to keep hold of 4th, a solid performance ahead of his marathon debut in Fukuoka next month.


Hitachi Butsuryu's Toshiyuki Yanagi followed Shitara with the fastest time on the Sixth Stage, passing all three teams ahead of him and returning Hitachi Butsuryu to 1st with one stage to go and a 3-second lead over Honda. With just 32 seconds separating the top four the 13.5 km anchor stage was bound to be close, and a 40:27 from Yuki Matsumura was enough to put Honda ahead and into the winner's position. Fujitsu moved back into 2nd, DeNA taking 3rd and Hitachi Butsuryu dropping back to 4th. A stage win from Tomohiro Tanigawa brought the Konica Minolta team within 9 seconds of Hitachi Butsuryu but was only enough to put the past national championships 5th.

Back at the cutoff for New Year Ekiden qualification, past regulars Komori Corporation and JR Higashi Nihon fell out of the bracket, caught by the Police Headquarters, which put ten officers under 30 minutes at last month's Takashimadaira 10 km, and the Sunbelx supermarket team, which runs an entertaining advertising campaign featuring its Kenyan ace Ezekiel Cheboitibin hawking the week's specials to the Japanese public. They and the eleven more mainstream teams ahead of them now head into prep for the raison d'être for the entire corporate team system, the New Year Ekiden national championships.

58th East Japan Corporate Men's Ekiden Championships

Kumagaya, Saitama, 11/3/17
25 teams, 7 stages, 77.5 km
click here for complete results

Top Team Results - top 13 qualify for New Year Ekiden
1. Honda - 3:47:55
2. Fujitsu - 3:48:42
3. DeNA - 3:48:51
4. Hitachi Butsuryu - 3:49:10
5. Konica Minolta - 3:49:19
6. Nissin Shokuhin - 3:49:46
7. Yachiyo Kogyo - 3:50:02
8. Kanebo - 3:50:51
9. Yakult - 3:52:26
10. Subaru - 3:52:29
11. Press Kogyo - 3:54:07
12. Police Headquarters - 3:54:13
13. Sunbelx - 3:54:14
14. Komori Corporation - 3:54:46
15. JR Higashi Nihon - 3:55:19

Top Individual Stage Performances
First Stage (11.6 km) - Yuki Muta (Hitachi Butsuryu) - 34:09
Second Stage (15.3 km) - Kenta Murozauka (DeNA) - 45:08
Third Stage (9.2 km) - Bidan Karoki (DeNA) - 25:33
Fourth Stage (9.5 km) - Ken Yokote (Fujitsu) - 28:06
Fifth Stage (7.8 km) - Yusuke Sato (Fujitsu) - 22:52 - CR
Sixth Stage (10.6 km) - Toshiyuki Yanagi (Hitachi Butsuryu) - 30:16
Seventh Stage (13.5 km) - Tomohiro Tanigawa (Konica Minolta) - 40:22

© 2017 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...
82 comments
Read more

2026 Izumo Ekiden Preview

We're at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii where JRN associate editor Mika Tokairin is making her debut here as an athlete after having come to Kona for years as a journalist. Next to Kona the most eyes worldwide will be on the Chicago Marathon , where a solid Japanese contingent is lining up including men's marathon NR holder Suguru Osako and half marathon NR holder Tomoki Ota , Kiyoshi Koga , and the other power couple in Japanese marathoning, last year's Berlin Marathon runner-up Akira Akasaki and Paris Olympics 6th-placer Yuka Akasaki . Osako's manager told JRN that he is going for the Asian Record of 2:04:43 held by Moroccan-born Bahraini El-Hassan El-Abbassi who was served up a 4-year suspension not long after setting the record. Last year's Warsaw Marathon winner Ryoma Takeuchi is at the Perth Running Festival marathon in Australia where he hopes to add a CR win to his PB at July's Gold Coast Marathon. On the home front Keita Satoh i...
Post a Comment
Read more