japan running news

Women's marathon NR holder and Paris Olympic team member Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) ran Friday's Paris Festival of Running , one of six Japanese athletes across the four main distances at the event. Maeda was 19th of 24 finishers in the elite women's 5 km, running 16:13 to winner Caroline Nyaga 's 14:40. Haruka Ogawa (Rikkyo Univ.) was next in 16:24 for 20th. Tomo Muramatsu (Ritsumeikan Univ.) was the top Japanese woman in the elite 10 km, 13th of 14 in 35:04 over 5 minutes behind winner Likina Amebaw . The men had a little more success, with Naoki Ota (Yakult) 7th of 11 in the elite 5 km in 14:03 and Shunpei Yamaguchi (Waseda Univ.) 9th in 14:10. Hagos Gebrhiwet won in 13:24. Jemal Mekonnen won the elite 10 km in 27:43 by 1 seconds over Hillary Kipkoech , with Haruto Ishizuka (Waseda Univ.) 22nd in 30:06. Two days later at the Paris Marathon , men's Olympic marathon team alternate Yuki Kawauchi (ANDS) continued the downward trajectory of his performances this ...

At least three noteworthy international races had Japanese athletes in their fields this weekend. Fresh off his 6th-place finish at the Budapest World Championships, 3000 m steeplechase national record holder Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.) took 7th at Saturday's Xiamen Diamond League meet in China, running 8:18.32 to winner El Bakkali Soufiane 's 8:10.31. Also Saturday, Waseda University athletes Tomonori Yamaguchi , Haruto Ishizuka and Taishi Ito ran the Birell 10 km Road Race in Prague along with corporate leaguer Ryota Kondo (Toyota Boshoku). Both Yamaguchi and Ito ran faster than their track 10000 m PBs, Yamaguchi the top Japanese man at 8th in 29:13, Ishizuka 9th in 29:17, Kondo 10th in 29:28 and Ito 11th in 29:29. Japan-based Alexander Mutiso (ND Software) was 2nd in 27:48 behind Ethiopian Tadese Worku , 1st in 29:35. Sunday at Germany's Volksbank Muenster Marathon , Ai Ikemoto made her international marathon debut with a 4th-place finish in 2:41:30. "I wa...

Japan's biggest and best college meet happens over the next four days at the 102nd Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships . After returning to its traditional home at Tokyo's Olympic Stadium last year, this year it's been banished back out to the woodlands of rural Kanagawa at Sagami Gion Stadium. All four days of the meet will be streamed live. Day one streaming is above and below, with the links to the rest on the KGRR channel on Youtube. Meet schedule and live results are here . From a long distance perspectives there's more racing then ever before, with the D2 men's 10000 m split into two heats and the D2 men's 5000 m having a qualification round. The D1/D2/D3 divisions work a bit differently, D1 being made up of the top-scoring schools overall each year, i.e. those with complete all-around track and field programs, with everyone else like Hakone Ekiden-focused programs Komazawa University and Aoyama Gakuin University in D2, and D3 being t...

The Tokyo Six University Meet took place Apr. 2 at Tokyo's National Stadium. In the men's 5000 m, Waseda University 3rd-year Haruto Ishizuka ran a PB 13:46.31 for the win. "The first half went out fast, so my time ended up being a lot faster than I expected," he said post-race. 2023 has been good for Waseda so far. In January the team placed 6th at the Hakone Ekiden, making the seeded bracket for next year's 100th running. In February 4th-year Koki Sato won the Nobeoka Nishi Nihon Marathon in his debut at the distance. In March 2nd-year Tomonori Yamaguchi won a race in Hong Kong. Ishizuka said his teammates' success gave him "good synergy." In late April he plans to race 10000 m, where, he said, "I'll be looking to run another big PB and go sub-28." source article: https://www.sanspo.com/article/20230402-SQSFXEQ53RDMFNWF7NH3SCVESE/ translated by Brett Larner

With 2021 Hakone Ekiden MVP Vincent Yegon  set to run anchor,  Tokyo Kokusai University  was expected to be a serious contender for the win in its Izumo Ekiden debut. But as it turned out the team as a whole was strong enough to pull off the win on its own strength, not just his. Some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded at the Izumo Ekiden made for an unpredictable race, but TKU was solid throughout, all six of its runners making the top 5 on their individual stages. Inheriting a 3rd-place position from TKU's first two runners, its third runner Ken Tansho  blew the race apart when he went to the front and opened a 29-second lead over Hakone runner-up Soka University . The teams chasing TKU changed over the next two stages, but its lead held steady around 30 seconds by the time Yegon took over. It was simply too hot for him to rewrite the record books, but Yegon had no problem at all bringing TKU home to the win in its debut, breaking the finish tape in 2:12:10...

Even more than in Osaka , top-level Japanese athletes turned out in big numbers for the 83rd Tokyo Track and Field Championships , stretched out over a leisurely four-day schedule this weekend at Komazawa Stadium. Despite terrible weather conditions throughout the long weekend they brought new meet records in eighteen events, breaking some records that had stood for over 50 years. All three men's sprints saw new meet records. 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics men's 4x100 m relay silver medalist Aska Cambridge (Nike) ran a meet record 10.29 (+0.3) to win his 100 m opening heat, improved that to 10.26 (-0.3) to take his semifinal, then took the record further again with a 10.22 (-0.8) win in the final. Keigo Yasuda (Daito Bunka Univ.) tied the men's 200 m meet record at 20.97 (-1.0) to win the final. Daichi Inoue (Nihon Univ.) ran 46.81 to break the previous men's 400 m meet record of 47.05, set in 1996 before he was born. Men's middle distance also had new meet r...