japan running news

by Brett Larner

This week's 88th Hakone Ekiden, the Kanto region university men's ekiden championship, was a watershed event, with winner Toyo University taking over eight minutes off the record for the ten stage, 217.9 km event to become the first school to break an average 3:00/km pace for the entire race.  How do Toyo and the other top-placing schools at this year's Hakone Ekiden compare to the best in the world's other leading university men's distance program, the United States' NCAA Division I?

In the NCAA students usually focus on distances up to 5000 m through the winter indoor track season, up to 10000 m in the spring outdoor track season, and then up to 10 km cross-country in the fall.  With no indoor track season in Japan, after the New Year in Kanto students usually focus on training for a March half-marathon or the 10 km and 12 km selection races for Japan's World Cross-Country teams, then anything from 1500 m up to a half-marathon through the …

by Brett Larner

Last month JRN published a comparison of the achievements of American and Japanese men aged 18-22 over the 5000 m, 10000 m, half marathon and marathon distances, part two in a periodic series occasioned by October’s simultaneous NCAA XC Pre-Nationals 8 km and Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai 20 km road race. The comparison generated a fair number of comments and emails; my thanks to all those who offered insight and additional data, suggested further ideas and lines of inquiry, or gave constructive criticism. Among the findings in the previous article:

 Using a common calculator of equivalent performances to set thresholds of 13:30, 28:03, 1:02:24 and 2:11:36 for the four distances, prior to the outstanding performances last spring by American 18 year olds German Fernandez and Chris Derrick Japanese runners led their American counterparts in speed, range, and to a lesser degree depth at ages 18 and 19. Fernandez and Derrick are exceptional young athletes who may rewrite the Ameri…

by Brett Larner

special thanks to Ken Young at ARRS, the IAAF and All-Time Athletics for their database assistance in preparing this article

Last month I published a comparison of the results from the American NCAA Pre-Nationals XC Meet and the Hakone Ekiden Qualifier Road Race which showed that more Japanese university runners were running as fast or faster for a hilly 20 km on the roads than American university runners were running for a hilly 8 km XC. I received a fair amount of response to this comparison, much of it negative and much of it from American university runners, in the comment section, on message boards such as letsrun.com, and in my email inbox. One such letsrun poster asked what was apparently supposed to be a rhetorical question:

So how many of these "Rising Sons" have run sub-13:30 at age 18?

Yeah.The poster was referring to Americans German Fernandez and Chris Derrick, both of whom achieved this impressive feat in late spring this year, clocking times of 1…