Kiyama and Murakami Making International Debuts at United Airlines NYC Half

Since the start of JRN's collegiate development program in 2012, a partnership between the New York Road Runners and the Ageo City Half Marathon that brings two of the top male university half marathoners in the country to the United Airlines NYC Half every year, a total of 25 athletes have made the trip. For most of them it's been their first time racing outside Japan. 10 of the 25 have been from Komazawa University, including 4 of the 5 fastest times and 4 of the 5 best placings. Kenta Murayama's 1:00:57 for 5th in 2017 leads both lists and still stands as the fastest half marathon ever run by a Japanese man on U.S. soil.

This year two more Komazawa runners are in New York as numbers 24 and 25, Yudai Kiyama and Hibiki Murakami. At Ageo last November Kiyama and Murakami ran PBs of 1:01:59 and 1:02:04 for 2nd and 4th overall to pick up invites to the NYC Half. A 3rd-year, Kiyama was a national-level 1500 m runner in high school. At Komazawa he struggled to make its starting roster for the 3-race ekiden season, making only the 10-man Hakone Ekiden squad his 2nd year in 2024, where he was 12th on the downhill Sixth Stage.

This past season he missed the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden teams again, but his Ageo performance marked a breakthrough that was enough to have Komazawa head coach Atsushi Fujita give him the responsibility of handling the important First Stage at Hakone. He ran well, leading the chase pack behind breakaway leader Shunsuke Yoshii of Chuo University and showing his roots as a 1500 m runner with a fast kick that put him 2nd behind Yoshii. A month later he made a massive breakthrough at the Marugame Half Marathon, running as high in the field as 7th in a race where the top 4 all broke 60 minutes, dropping to 15th by 20 km, but coming back with the fastest close in the field to retake 10th.

A 2nd-year, Murakami's standout performance in high school was a win on the 2021 National High School Ekiden's Seventh Stage where he anchored Sera H.S. to the national title. Like Kiyama he didn't make Komazawa's starting roster for any of the 3 ekidens his first year, but after missing Izumo last fall he made his debut 2 weeks before Ageo with a 5th-place run on the National University Ekiden's Fifth Stage. His Ageo time earned him a place on one of Hakone's 2 longest legs, the 23.1 km Ninth Stage, where he was 5th again. Marugame was good to Murakami too as he ran a new PB of 1:01:46.

1:00:32 makes Kiyama the fastest Japanese collegiate runner ever to line up in New York, where he is ranked 5th in the field. Murakami is the 3rd-fastest ever behind Kiyama and Murayama. With other alumni of the program like Yuta Shitara and Akira Akasaki having gone on to break national records and make single-digit placings at the Olympics, good runs in New York would mark Kiyama and Murakami as top people to watch in the next generation of Japanese distance runners. Streaming of the United Airlines NYC Half starts at 7:00 a.m. local time Sunday.

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...

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...

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