Skip to main content

2:27 Marathoner Shimokado Quits Corporate League to Go Independent


As always, thank you all for your support!

I would like to announce that I, Miharu Shimokado, have quit the Nitori women's running team to relaunch my career as an independent pro marathon runner. I've made this decision to go independent because day by day I've felt more strongly that to grow as an athlete I have to be able to express my own unique style and color, in both the on times and the off.

As an independent runner free from the threat of being crushed under the weight of other people's image of the marathon I'm ready to become a truly beautiful runner in every sense. As an immediate goal I'll pursue qualifying for the MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials. After that it's making the Tokyo Olympics marathon team. I want to show that you don't have to throw the woman part away to get stronger, that we are strong because we are women.

Please check out my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! And remember the name Miharu Shimokado!

Translator's note: Shimokado ran her marathon best of 2:27:54 at the 2017 Nagoya Women's Marathon. She is scheduled to run Sunday's Gold Coast Marathon.

source article:
https://www.facebook.com/下門美春-791444154577434/
translated by Brett Larner

Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Metts said…
Excellent! Hope she can follow in the steps of other notable independent pros and notable amateurs as mentioned recently here who have also excelled outside the confines or the corporate system. Not to mention the latest Japanese royal choosing love over status.

Most-Read This Week

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."...

Australian Male Arrested on Drug Smuggling Charges After Entering Japan for Osaka Marathon

On Apr. 9 the Kinki Region Bureau of Health, Labor and Welfare's Drug Control Division arrested Matthew Inglis Fox , 38, an Australian business owner of no known fixed address, on charges of violating the importation regulations of the Narcotics Control Act by smuggling tablets containing marijuana elements from the United States. The suspect had entered Japan in February to run in the Osaka Marathon . The suspect was arrested on suspicion of smuggling approximately 12 pills containing marijuana by sending them from a U.S. airport to Osaka's Kansai Airport using an international courier service on Feb. 19. The Osaka branch of the Customs Service discovered the tablets in arriving cargo and suspected them to be narcotics. Customs contacted the Narcotics Control Division, which then began its investigation of the case. According to the Narcotics Control Division, the suspect denies the charges.  Translator's note: Fox, who received a lifetime ban from the Ageo City Half Mara...

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...