japan running news

by Brett Larner

The Golden Games in Nobeoka are the main spring Japanese meet for distance runners, held in Japan's Eugune, the Asahi Kasei team's home of Nobeoka.  Fans line the track, banging on the metal sponsor boards with sticks to produce a wall of sound that pushes runners to some of the best Japanese times of the year, every year.

This year a lot of the big names will be chasing Olympic qualifying times in the United States, but the 5000 m and 10000 m still have deep lists of upper-tier Japanese and Japan-based African talent.  Last year two-time World Championships medalist Paul Tanui (Team Kyudenko) paced Kenta Murayama (Team Asahi Kasei) and Yuta Shitara (Team Honda) to two of the fastest Japanese 10000 m times ever.  This year both Tanui and Shitara are back in the 10000 m along with Shitara's twin brother Keita Shitara (Team Konica Minolta), 61-minute half marathoner university teammates Keisuke Nakatani and Naoki Kudo (Komazawa Univ.) and former Hakone Ekiden…

by Brett Larner
video by Ekiden News



Fourteen and a half years is a long time to wait.

Everything was aligned. The field. The weather.  The loom of impending Olympic glory.  The sheer vibe.  Hachioji.   Thousands of fans packed around a home soil track tucked in the mountainous foothills of suburban western Tokyo knowing they were going to see something special, that, after the 5000 meter-wide leak sprung mid-summer by the Salazar-powered Suguru Osako, the sheer mass of young talent building in Japan was finally going to break through the dam holding them back.

All credit due to Kenyan William Malel (Honda), who went out at 10000 m world record pace and led completely alone start to finish, withering on the vine with 1000 to go but pulling down a PB of 27:22.12 for the win, and to Johana Maina (Fujitsu) who almost ran him down.  But the race was not their story.

From the start Tetsuya Yoroizaka (Asahi Kasei), once the fastest-ever Japanese collegiate over 10000 m and until today the …

by Brett Larner

While the corporate leagues take a breather after their regional track and field championships last week, Kanto-area university runners are bracing for the second weekend of Japan's best track meet, the Kanto Regional University Track and Field Championships at Yokohama's Nissan Stadium.

The men's 800 m should be highlights of the meet, Nihon University senior Sho Kawamoto having set a national record of 1:45.75 two weeks ago at the Golden Grand Prix Tokyo meet in Tokyo's National Stadium.  His second-year teammate Jun Mitake is the next-best runner in the field with a 1:48.67 PB, so while another NR is probably too much to ask between the two of them they should have a good chance of taking the 1:48.06 meet record set in 2009 by Kenyan Daniel Gitau, another Nihon University runner.

It says a lot about the quality of Kanto university men's distance running that four of the five Japanese men in this week's ARRS world top 200 rankings are collegia…

by Brett Larner

With heavy snow scheduled to hit most of the country on Saturday four races fill Sunday's calendar.   Chief among them is the 52nd edition of the Nobeoka Nishi Nippon Marathon, a developmental race that has seen the debuts of the likes of Moscow World Championships marathon 5th-placer Kentaro Nakamoto (Team Yasukawa Denki) and Hiroaki Sano (Team Honda), the top Japanese man at last year's Chicago Marathon.  Sho Matsumoto (Nikkei Business) leads the way with a 2:13:38 best from last year's Nobeoka, but look for challenges from debuting Hakone Ekiden Sixth Stage course record holder Kenta Chiba (Team Fujitsu) and Team Otsuka Seiyaku's ace rookie Yudai Yamakawa. Click here for a field listing and more info.

The 54th Karatsu 10-miler sees Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) taking on sub-60 minute half marathoner Mekubo Mogusu (Kenya/Team Nissin Shokuhin), Hiroyuki Uno formerly of Hakone Ekiden course record setters Toyo University, as he continues to …

by Brett Larner

This ekiden season I've had a few thoughts kicking around, and watching this week's Hakone Ekiden a few of them became clearer.  These are still in progress, but at the moment this is what I'm thinking in terms of running as a spectator sport and about the quality of Japanese men's distance running right now.



Quality: Japanese men's running is coming up very, very quickly.  I was in the lead car at November's Ageo City Half Marathon, where 18 men, 17 of them university runners, broke 63 minutes.  As it was going on we all thought it was a slow race because there were so many people running that pace all the way, no separation at all in the mass of the pack. See the JRN header photo above, taken just past halfway.  That's pretty unusual in Japan, especially at the university level; generally you'll get a handful of guys who run an aggressive pace and a mass running dead on a safe pace, 3:00/km in a half marathon, for example.

The First …

by Brett Larner
photos by Kazuyuki Sugimatsu

click here for Hakone Ekiden Day Two results and report



After losing to Nittai University in tough conditions last year, Hakone Ekiden course record holder Toyo University took a big step toward a return to the top, winning Day One of the 90th Hakone Ekiden in 5:27:13, the second-fastest time ever for the five stage, 108.0 km Day One Course behind only Toyo's own 5:24:45 course record.  Critical to the team's success were sub-28 / sub-62 identical twin seniors Keita and Yuta Shitara, each of who won his stage in its all-time 4th-fastest mark.  Rival Komazawa University, on a quest to become just the fourth school to complete the triple crown after winning this season's Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden Championships, was only 59 seconds behind in 5:28:12 to become the second-fastest team ever on the Day One course and leaving plenty of room for it to challenge Toyo for the overall win on the return trip tomorrow.  Pre-ra…

by Brett Larner
click here for Japanese women's 2013 rankings

2013 continued Japanese men's upward trend, the fifth year in history that the country has produced at least ten sub-2:10 marathon performances and the all-time second-best average of its top ten fastest marathons, all-time top ten performances over 5000 m, 10000 m and half marathon, new world records for depth at several races, just shy of a World Championships marathon medal, incredible growth among its collegiates, and a charismatic and independent star to drive the sport's popularity.

One of the most important things to happen this year was the nearing of parity between the collegiate and corporate systems.  In JRN's top ten rankings, scored using a system that takes into account quality, placing and competitiveness relative to other ranked athletes, only five of the overall top ten hailed from the corporate leagues, with four university men and one indy filling out the list.  Collegiates and said indy oc…

by Brett Larner



2012 National Champion Komazawa University came out swinging at the start of university ekiden season, winning the Izumo Ekiden for the first time in 15 years with a 2:09:11 course record at the six stage, 44.5 km event's 25th running on Oct. 14.  2013 National University Half Marathon champion Shogo Nakamura got the race off on the right foot, surging halfway into the 8.0 km First Stage to give the #1-seeded Komazawa a 20-second lead that only grew as each stage went by.  Sub-29 first-year Keisuke Nakatani added a few seconds to the lead over the 5.8 km Second Stage, but it was a spectacular 22:36 course record by star junior Kenta Murayama on the 7.9 km Third Stage, a full 12 seconds better than the old record set by Japan's current #1 distance runner, Komazawa alum Tsuyoshi Ugachi (Team Konica Minolta) that blew the race apart for the rest of the field.  Murayama evidently learned something in his long conversation with Bernard Lagat (U.S.A.) following this …