Weekend Racing Roundup

China saw a new men's national record of 2:06:57 from Jie He at the Wuxi Marathon Sunday, but in Japan it was a relatively quiet weekend with mostly cold and rainy amateur-level marathons across the country.

At the Tokushima Marathon, club runner Yuhi Yamashita won the men's race by almost 4 1/2 minutes in 2:17:02, the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, but oddly took 22 seconds to get across the starting line. The women's race saw a close finish between the top two, with Shiho Iwane winning in 2:49:33 over Ayaka Furukawa, 2nd in 2:49:46.
At the 41st edition of the Sakura Marathon in Chiba, Yukie Matsumura (Comodi Iida) ran the fastest Japanese women's time of the weekend, 2:42:45, to take the win. Club runner Yuki Kuroda won the men's race in 2:20:08.
Chika Yokota won the Saga Sakura Marathon women's race in 2:49:33. Yuki Yamada won the men's race in 2:21:47 after taking the lead in the final 2 km.
Naoki Inoue won the 16th running of the Shimantogawa Sakura Marathon in 2:26:19, 52-year-old Noriko Honda winning the women's race in 3:12:01.

On the track, the race of the weekend was at the Juntendo University Time Trials in Chiba. Back from a pre-Hakone injury, this past academic year's breakout 1st-year Kazuma Maeda (Tokyo Nogyo Univ.) beat the other star 1st-year, high school 5000 m NR holder Hiroto Yoshioka (Juntendo Univ.) 7:57.25 to 7:59.87 to win the 3000 m. Tokyo Olympian Yuta Bando (Fujitsu) was 3rd in 8:02.16. Seiya Shigeno (Press Kogyo) won the 5000 m fast heat in 13:55.04, with Kenshin Ebisawa leading four Juntendo runners sub-29 to win the 10000 m in 28:50.07.

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