japan running news

75 years, 75 stories from the people who made Fukuoka international.  75 legendary marathoners spanning 1957 to 2020 from over 30 countries, including 26 Olympic and World Championships medalists and 5 marathon world record breakers, remember running the Fukuoka International Marathon ahead of its final running on Dec. 5. Premiering Friday, Dec. 3, 2021 at 19:00 Japan time, 21:00 in Sydney, 13:00 in Nairobi, 11:00 in Berlin, 10:00 in London, 5:00 a.m. in NYC and 2:00 a.m. in L.A.  A JRN production. Support JRN:

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

by Brett Larner special thanks to Dr. Helmut Winter for assistance with graphics It's fitting that last weekend's U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials brought American marathoning back to Los Angeles.  In the years leading up to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics American men and women paved the way as the world's best marathoners, but the L.A. Olympics marked the start of a long decline on both sides that has only recently started to turn around.  With Galen Rupp making a massively anticipated debut and Los Angeles launching its bid for the 2024 Olympics the 2016 L.A. Trials may come to be looked back upon as another turning point.  It's worth taking an honest look at the last 50 years or so of history to understand where that turning point may take American marathoning. Looking at the average of the ten fastest marathons per year by American men, for the 16 years between the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics American men's marathoning develop...