japan running news

by Brett Larner
photos courtesy of Chuo Gakuin University

"Kihara, I'm sorry, I had never heard your name before. I'll always remember it after this. That was incredible."

--Legendary marathoner Toshihiko Seko to Chuo Gakuin University first-year student Masato Kihara after Kihara's victory on the 1st stage of the 2006 Hakone Ekiden.A lot can change in a couple of years. On Jan. 2, 2006 Masato Kihara was an unknown freshman at Chuo Gakuin University, a small school which had been lucky to squeeze into the prestigious university championship Hakone Ekiden but was not regarded as even B-class. Not a single runner from Chuo Gakuin had ever won a Hakone stage, one of the basic marks of a running school's authenticity. Kihara was a 19 year old from Hyogo Prefecture, a graduate of Hotoku High School where he had shown only a hint of his potential, his best mark a 14:26 5000 m. The 1st stage of the Hakone Ekiden is usually one of the most interesting, a fertile mix of…

by Brett Larner

The last major race of the Japanese running year, the 36th Jitsugyodan Half Marathon championships, took place Mar. 16 in Yamaguchi. Warm, somewhat windy weather made for more difficult conditions than usual and the absence of entered big names such as course record holders Mizuki Noguchi and Toshinari Takaoka marginally reduced the excitement of this year's event, but both women's and men's races nevertheless featured impressive performances.

The Men's Race
Coming at the end of the professional Japanese marathon season in an Olympic selection year, the Jitsugyodan Half Marathon was absent many of the top runners. Advertised entrants including Takaoka, Yu Mitsuya and Masato Imai did not appear, leaving the field dominated by recent recruits. Among these, Team Toyota's Tomohiko Sumi took the lead from the gun, running 2:45 for the 1st km with a substantial gap over the rest of the field. It was a replay of his three runs as a Nittai University student o…

by Brett Larner

While the NCAA XC Championships were taking place an ocean away, the final qualification race for the de facto Japanese university championships was happening northwest of Tokyo at the Ageo City Half Marathon in Ageo, Saitama.

The Japanese university running world revolves around the legendary Hakone Ekiden, a ten-stage relay race held every year on Jan. 2 and 3rd. The top nineteen university teams in eastern Japan plus a compilation team of ace runners from schools which do not make the top nineteen race from downtown Tokyo to the mountaintop lakeside resort town of Hakone and back in front of hundreds of thousands of courseside spectators and the largest television audience of any event or program in Japan. If you are a young male runner in Japan then getting to run in Hakone is the absolute highlight of your life and something which anyone in Japan, runner or non-runner, will respect for the rest of your life.

The fall university season in Japan is built up of ekidens …