japan running news

Today's the 25th anniversary of when I first moved to Japan. It's been interesting. If I had to pick one highlight, this pic was probably it. Glad as always I decided to move somewhere guns aren't part of day-to-day life. Re: the pic, it's of Barcelona '92 Olympic silver medalist Koichi Morishita , me, and Spanish '92 Olympian Jose Esteban Montiel running the 2017 Barcelona Marathon. I started running marathons in '93 after watching Morishita vs. Hwang Young-cho at the Barcelona Olympics. Somehow, 25 years later Barcelona hired me to bring Morishita, Hwang and Yuko Arimori to the marathon for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Olympic marathon with the other three medalists. I was going to run, and Morishita, who doesn't really run any more, decided the night before to jump in and run the first 11.5 km with me . I tend to be a pretty lucky person and have had a lot of good things happen these 25 years, and some not so good, but of all of them t...

19-year-old me watched Young-cho Hwang and Koichi Morishita race up Montjuic at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and said, "That's what I want to do." A year later I did my first marathon. Today I ran up Montjuic with them over the same 4 km that changed my life 25 years ago.  They were my original inspiration in wanting to run marathons and Morishita in particular was the person who first sparked my interest in and respect for Japanese distance running. I'll always be grateful to them for what they showed me as a teenager and for sharing the day with me today. Postscript: At dinner that night Morishita decided he wanted to run the first 11.5 km loop of the Barcelona Marathon the next morning.  We ran it together with Jose Esteban Montiel , a Spanish Olympian who finished 32nd in '92 and was doing his last marathon.  Morishita set the pace, going through 10 km in 44:49 before surging for the last km and a half.  Montiel and I stayed together on sub-3:10 p...