japan running news

http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/asahi/jp/csr/sports/rikujo/result/2011/110730.html

translated and edited by Brett Larner

World Championships marathon team member Hiroyuki Horibata (Team Asahi Kasei) in training as camera crews look on.  Click any photo to enlarge.

We're down to the last phase of Team Asahi Kasei's summer training camp in Chojabaru, Oita. Hiroyuki Horibata has been able to keep up the great shape he's been in all summer, but even though he's showing a few signs of fatigue he's over the hump in his training and everything has gone according to plan. "Like every year," Horibata commented, "this year we're doing the usual Choja summer training camp. There's less than a month left until the World Championships marathon and my focus right now is just on keeping the training going smoothly. There's about a week or so left in this training camp and that's when I want to hit the peak of my training."


Horibata's trainin…

by Brett Larner

This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of one of Japan's oldest and most respected marathons, the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon, usually abbreviated to Betsudai in Japanese. Betsudai has been the site of many historic performances, including Toru Terasawa's 2:15:16 world record in 1963, Shigeru Soh's 2:09:06 world record near-miss in 1978, Kodo drummer Kiyoko Obata's 2:48:52 in 1979 to become the first recorded Japanese woman to complete a marathon in Japan, American Dick Beardsley's 1981 battle against the Soh twins, future Barcelona Olympic silver medalist and Samuel Wanjiru coach Koichi Morishita's 2:08:53 debut marathon national record in 1991, Yoshihisa Hosaka's pair of 60+ world records in 2009 and 2010, and more.

Last year on a new, purportedly faster, course, Australian debutant Jeff Hunt turned what would have been a garden-variety 2:10-2:11 pack race into something unforgettable with a thrilling charge up from the second pack to chal…

by Brett Larner

Updated Jan. 19 with complete elite field.

In a special advance release, organizers of the 60th anniversary Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon scheduled for Feb. 6 briefly made the names of some of this year's elite field publicly available on Jan. 14. At the top of the foreign elite field are 2003 Beppu-Oita winner Samson Ramadhani (Tanzania) and the man who made last year's Beppu-Oita of international note with an exciting come-from-behind 3rd-place finish and Australian debut record of 2:11:00, Jeff Hunt. Ramadhani, the 2006 Commonwealth Games and 2007 Biwako Mainichi Marathon champion, returns to Beppu-Oita after defeating Hunt in hot and humid conditions at October's Commonwealth Games where he was 5th in 2:19:31 to Hunt's 2:25:03 13th place finish. The rematch should be one of the highlights of this year's race.

Also in the international field are last year's runner-up Daniel Njenga (Kenya/Team Yakult), Ethiopian Abiyote Guta, last year's Marra…

by Brett Larner

With the top Japanese men's 10000 m and half marathon times of the year and a 9th-place finish at the World Half Marathon Championships under his belt within the last month, Miyazaki Prefecture's Tomoya Onishi, 23, delivered another big run with a 43:55 stage record for the 15.3 km Fourth Stage on Day Three of the 2010 Kyushu One-Circuit Ekiden, Oct. 31 on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu. Onishi's time broke the existing stage record by 1:12, 5 seconds per km, and was equivalent to a solid 46:11 10-miler. Stage runner-up Ryuji Watanabe of Fukuoka Prefecture also broke the old Fourth Stage record with a 44:16 clocking.

As with the first two days of the ten-day Kyushu One-Circuit Ekiden, the Miyazaki Prefecture team dominated the early stages of Day Three. A weak run from Third Stage runner Noritaka Yokoyama put Miyazaki 59 seconds behind rivals Fukuoka prefecture at the start of the Fourth Stage, and the team spent the next four stage edging bac…

by Brett Larner

click here for detailed race coverage on JRNLive

Yemane Tsegay of Ethiopia wins the 2010 Biwako Mainichi Marathon in 2:09:34. Click photo for video highlights courtesy of NHK.

The cold, rain and wind that cursed January's Osaka International Women's Marathon and February's Tokyo Marathon returned this month to take down hopes of fast times at the 65th Biwako Mainichi Marathon on Mar. 7. After an early snafu when several of the pacemakers took a wrong turn in the first km the drizzling, cool first half was moderately slower than hoped for, 1:04:07. Ethiopian Yemane Tsegay then took the pace down to 2:54/km to run a solo second half. Tsegay kept the splits under 3:00 through 30 km but after the pacemakers departed the temperature dropped from 9 to 7 degrees and the rain intensified. His pace dropped to as slow as 3:22/km.

Behind him first-timer Yukihiro Kitaoka (Team NTN) led a pack of six which included three runners in their marathon debuts, one doing his secon…