japan running news

by Brett Larner photos by Mari Tanigawa With a shiny new IAAF gold label to its name, Sunday's Gold Coast Airport Marathon has put together fields worthy of its distinction as the only Australian race to have achieved the honor.  The 2:27:17 women's course record is a definite possibility, the men's 2:10:01 record all but a certainty with most of the top end of the field talking about times that would put them under Rob de Castella 's prehistoric 2:09:18 Australian all-comers' record dating back to 1982.  The race will be streamed live worldwide starting at 5:45 a.m. local time with the gun going off at 7:20, giving fans worldwide the chance to catch a potential piece of history.  For the first time, JRN will be part of the broadcast alongside hosts Ian Eckersley and Steve Moneghetti to help cover the stellar Japanese component of the elite field. The withdrawal of #1-seeded Mulu Seboka (Ethiopia) means Naoko Takahashi 's 2:23:14 Australian all-comers...

by Brett Larner After a long push starting at 25 km Moroccan Ahmed Baday ran a PB 2:10:14 to win the 60th anniversary Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon on Feb. 6. In a race targeted to be in the mid-2:08's Baday ran in a pack with longtime Japan resident Daniel Njenga (Kenya/Team Yakult) and a dozen Japanese competitors including pre-race domestic favorites Atsushi Fujita (Team Fujitsu), the 2007 Beppu-Oita winner and former national record holder, and Kazuhiro Maeda (Team Kyudenko), who had a promising marathon debut with a 2nd-place finish at the 2009 Tokyo Marathon only to miss most of last year following ankle surgery. Early pacemaking irregularities by course record holder Gert Thys (South Africa) and two other pacers resulted in an opening 5 km split of 14:55 followed by 15:32 versus the targeted pace of 15:15 / km. The fast opening left the top two seeds, 2003 Beppu-Oita winner Samson Ramadhani (Tanzania) and Abiyote Guta (Ethiopia) playing catchup, and neither ever factor...

by Brett Larner Updated Jan. 19 with complete elite field. In a special advance release, organizers of the 60th anniversary Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon scheduled for Feb. 6 briefly made the names of some of this year's elite field publicly available on Jan. 14. At the top of the foreign elite field are 2003 Beppu-Oita winner Samson Ramadhani (Tanzania) and the man who made last year's Beppu-Oita of international note with an exciting come-from-behind 3rd-place finish and Australian debut record of 2:11:00, Jeff Hunt . Ramadhani, the 2006 Commonwealth Games and 2007 Biwako Mainichi Marathon champion, returns to Beppu-Oita after defeating Hunt in hot and humid conditions at October's Commonwealth Games where he was 5th in 2:19:31 to Hunt's 2:25:03 13th place finish. The rematch should be one of the highlights of this year's race. Also in the international field are last year's runner-up Daniel Njenga (Kenya/Team Yakult), Ethiopian Abiyote Guta , last year...