It looked like it was going to be a big weekend, and it delivered. For the 3rd time in his career Suguru Osako broke the men's marathon NR, running 1 second under the standing record to take 4th in the Valencia Marathon in 2:04:55. All the way to 40 km he was steady on 2:58/km, 2:05:10 pace, and like a surprising number of other people in both the men's and women's races, there was a massive jump over the last 2.195 km from his projected finish time to his actual one. His run put Osako back on top of the Japanese charts, put the average of Japan's 10 fastest marathon times of the year under 2:06 for the first time, and got him into the L.A. Olympics marathon trials. Valencia has been trying to get top-tier Japanese athletes to come for years, and now that they finally managed to do it it paid off in a big way. Expect more next year. Back home, former Takushoku University captain Derese Workneh won a 3-way race against Toyota teammates Kazuya Nishiyama and Bedan Ka...
Comments
* Rino Goshima's debut marathon performance. I have high expectations because of her previous road running exploits;
* Rika Kaseda - can she capitalize on her outstanding half marathon form;
* Sayaka Sato - in training her focus has been on building endurance for the 2nd half of the race where she has inevitably faltered in the past. Can she deliver results now?
* How will the 2 Australian athletes (Isobel Batt-Doyle and Leanne Pompeani) perform, (after Jessica Stenson's 2:22:56 PB at Tokyo last week, where she surprisingly, for me, beat all Japanese athletes.)
My big hope is that Rino Goshima has a great debut marathon. On paper, she may be the one to break Honami Maeda's national record in the future. At present, I can't see anyone breaking that record for some time unless Honami Maeda does it herself when she returns.