japan running news

by Brett Larner
video by naoki620

全日本予選会 関東は中央学院大がトップ通過。 最終組では潰滝が28:31！ pic.twitter.com/mkfy7SpL1i — EKIDEN_MANIA (@ekiden_mania) June 20, 2015Saturday saw the first event on the university men's ekiden circuit with regional qualifier action for November's National University Men's Ekiden.  Universities across the country that finished outside the seeded top six at last November's Nationals competed on the track in their regions, eight runners from each school split into four heats and their team score determined by the combined times of all eight.

The biggest event, needless to say, was in the Tokyo-area Kanto Region, home of the Hakone Ekiden, where twenty schools competed for nine places at Nationals.  Led by senior Hironori Tsuetaki, the double 5000 m and 10000 m D2 champ at last month's Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships, Chiba's Chuo Gakuin University came out on top as the only school to clear 3:59, its eight runners totalling 3:58.58…

by Brett Larner



Japan's biggest sporting event of the year is the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden, a ten-stage university men's road relay which each runner covering roughly a half marathon distance in front of a live nationwide TV audience of 40 million and millions more cheering courseside.  Each year the top ten of the twenty teams in the Hakone field are seeded to run again the next year, also running October's Izumo Ekiden.  The remaining schools are sent back to run the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, a 20 km road race qualifier in Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park, along with dozens of other schools from around the Kanto Region hopeful of earning the honor of a place on the starting line at Hakone come Jan. 2.

Monday's Izumo Ekiden saw an overall course record for the third time in the last four years, with individual stage records on three of its six legs.  In a sign of the continued explosively rapid rate of growth in Japanese men's collegiate athletics, Saturday's Yosenkai …

by Brett Larner
click here for a collection of 2013 Hakone Ekiden photos courtesy of jiji.com
click here for video highlights courtesy of NTV

Riding the momentum of its Day One win, Nittai University ran unchallenged throughout the second day of the 2013 HakoneEkiden to take its first overall Hakone title in 30 years, crossing the line in 11:13:26 with a lead of nearly five minutes over defending champion Toyo University. Nittai, winners of October’s Yosenkai qualifier after finishing a miserable 19th at Hakone last year, became the first team in Hakone’s 89-year history to go from the qualifier to the overall win. With its last winning team in 1983 having included future marathon world champion Hiromi Taniguchi in its lineup, Nittai’s return to the top took on special symbolic significance.

Nittai’s Yusuke Suzuki made a crucial contribution to the team’s success as he started the day off on the net 750 m downhill Sixth Stage, running well in his Hakone debut to prevent last year’s st…

by Brett Larner

Traditionally held one week apart, the world's two top 30 km races, the Kumanichi 30 km in southern Japan and the Ome 30 km in Tokyo's mountainous western suburbs, were both held Feb. 19 this year.

With over 17000 runners in this year's field Ome has long been a popular mass-participation event along with hosting an elite race, but Kumanichi has typically been an elite-only event with only a few dozen men and a handful of women.  Keeping with the explosion of mass-participation events, this year Kumanichi incorporated a new amateur full marathon, the Kumamotojo Marathon with a field of 10000, while keeping the small elite 30 km division on a new course covering most of the marathon course.  The leading candidate for the London Olympics 10000 m squad, Tsuyoshi Ugachi (Team Konica Minolta) took things in stride in his second Kumanichi appearance, splitting a solo 14:25 for the first 5 km well ahead of world record pace.  Although he slowed progressively for t…