Championship Ekiden Season Wraps Sunday

Championship ekiden season wraps up Sunday with its last two big events. In Kitakyushu, the 35th Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden brings together top high school, college and corporate league teams to race a short 27.2 km in five stages, with the longest leg split in two for the high school teams. University teams are absent this time except for one select team made up of women from the area, while the corporate league division has nine teams and the high school division 22 plus another select team.

2023 Queens Ekiden national champion Sekisui Kagaku is the top seed, its entry roster including members of its national title-winning lineup, Yuma Yamamoto, Rina Sasaki and Chikako Mori. Its closest competition is Queens 8th-placer Iwatani Sangyo, which has five of its six runners from the national championships entered including Kaede Kawamura, winner of the anchor stage at last weekend's National Women's Ekiden.

2023 National High School Ekiden winner Kamimura Gakuen H.S. leads the high school division and has its entire champion team on its Kitakyushu roster including sub-15 runner Caroline Kariba. Nationals 3rd-placer Ritsumeikan Uji H.S., 4th-placer Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S., 6th-placer Suma Gakuen H.S. and 9th-placer Ginga Gakuin H.S.are also in the race, with 7th-placer Chikushi Joshi Gakuen H.S. a late scratch. The race will be broadcast live on BS-TBS starting at 10:00 a.m. local time, and JRN will be on location in Kitakyushu. There might be streaming on the RKB Sports Live! Youtube channel.

As soon as Kitakyushu is done, the 29th National Men's Ekiden goes off in Hiroshima with a live commercial-free national broadcast on NHK. Like the National Women's Ekiden, the men's race features teams from all 47 prefectures made up of each one's best junior high school, high school, collegiate and corporate league runners, in the men's case racing 48.0 km in seven stages of 3.0 to 13.0 km length.

When the event returned last year for its first post-pandemic edition Nagano took 1 second off its own CR from the last pre-pandemic edition in 2020 as it won for a record-setting ninth time in 2:17:10. It's back with a strong lineup including high school 5000 m NR holder Hiroto Yoshioka (Juntendo Univ.), 27:30.69 10000 m runner Mebuki Suzuki (Komazawa Univ.), 1:01:50 half marathoner Taishi Ito (Waseda Univ.), and four members of 2023 National High School Ekiden CR break Saku Chosei H.S., Soma Nagahara, Shunpei Yamaguchi, Yamato Hamaguchi and Kazuma Shino.

2023 runner-up Saitama and 3rd-placer Tokyo are down on strength this year, but 4th-placer Chiba has a quality lineup led by 2024 Hakone Ekiden First Stage winner Kotaro Shinohara (Komazawa Univ.). Hakone Second Stage winner Asahi Kuroda (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) and his younger brother Zen Kuroda (Tamano Konan H.S.) lead 5th-placer Okayama, while the Rakunan H.S.-heavy 6th-placer Kyoto is feeling the absence of the star of its 2023 team, Keita Sato (Komazawa Univ.) who is skipping the ekiden this year for altitude training in the U.S. in prep for February's Millrose Games.

2023 7th-placer Hiroshima is led by another member of Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University, Ninth Stage winner Genta Kuramoto. 8th-placer Hyogo, a five-time winner, has a very decent lineup including 13:18.49 runner Yuta Bando (Fujitsu) and National High School Ekiden First Stage winner Sota Orita (Suma Gakuen H.S.). 9th-placer Miyagi saw its women pull of an anchor stage upset last weekend, but Hakone uphill Fifth Stage star Shunsuke Kikuchi (Daito Bunka Univ.) will have a tough time duplicating his role in scoring a top 10 overall finish for his team. 10th-placer Ibaraki is led by 2:06 marathoner Kyohei Hosoya and Yushin Akatsu of Hakone runner-up Komazawa University.

19-Yr-Old Munakata Breaks Miura's U20 NR to Win Ageo City Half Marathon

The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin

Ageo City Half Marathon Preview and Streaming

This weekend's big race is the Ageo City Half Marathon , the next stop on the collegiate men's circuit. Most of the universities bound for the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden use Ageo to thin down the list of contenders for their final Hakone rosters, and with JRN's development program that sends the first two Japanese collegiate finishers in Ageo to the United Airlines NYC Half every year a lot of coaches put in some of their A-listers too. That gives Ageo legendary depth and fast front-end speed, with a 1:00:47 course record last year from Kenyan corporate leaguer Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon) and the top 26 all clearing 63 minutes. Since a lot of programs just enter everybody on their rosters you never really know who on the entry list is actually going to show up, but if even a quarter of the people at the top end of this year's list run it'll be a great race, even if conditions are looking likely to be a bit warmer than ideal. Chuo Gakuin University 's Reishi Yoshi

10000 m NR Attempt In the Works Saturday at Hachioji Long Distance - Streaming and Preview

There are a bunch of other time trial meets this weekend and next, but Saturday's Hachioji Long Distance is the last big meet for Japanese men, 8 heats of Wavelight-paced 10000 m finely graded from target times of 28:50 down to 26:59 for the fastest heat. Heat 6 at 17:55 local time is effectively the B-race, with 35 Japan-based Kenyans targeting 27:10 at the front end, and in a lot of cases a spot on their teams at the New Year Ekiden national championship on Jan. 1. Corporate teams are only allowed to field one non-Japanese athlete in the New Year Ekiden, and only on its shortest stage, and getting to that has a big impact on African athletes' contracts and renewal prospects. Toyota Boshoku , Yasukawa Denki , Chugoku Denryoku , Aisan Kogyo , JR Higashi Nihon , Subaru and 2024 national champion Toyota are all fielding two Kenyans, and Aichi Seiko three. For people like Toyota's Felix Korir and Samuel Kibathi , getting as close to the 27:10 target time as they can and

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