japan running news

Yuta Shitara, Kento Otsu and Coach Sakai at the 2012 NYC Half

Sunday's United Airlines NYC Half marked the fifth year that the NYRR has invited the top two Japanese university finishers from November's Ageo City Half Marathon to run against top international competition in New York, a concept JRN proposed in 2011 and continues to help oversee.  For decades Japan's corporate leagues have sent runners to races like Philadelphia, San Diego and Virginia Beach, but relative to their pro elders the eight university men who have run a total of ten times in New York so far have represented themselves well with consistently serious and fast performances on a course with a challenging first half.

Otsu, Bernard Lagat and Kenta Murayama in 2013

The ten fastest times ever run in the United States by Japanese corporate league runners to date:

1:02:28 - Yasuaki Yamamoto (Tokyo Metro) - Philadelphia 1999
1:02:50 - Yoshinori Oda (Toyota) - Virginia Beach 2007
1:02:59 - Yoichiro Akiyama (Hond…

by Brett Larner
熊日30キロ優勝は設楽啓太くんでした！ pic.twitter.com/u4ZG27xFjf — つきこ (@t_tsuki) February 21, 2016Former national university record holder Keita Shitara (Team Konica Minolta) returned to Japan's biggest 30 km, the Kumanichi Road Race, for the first time in three years to pick up the win in Kumanichi's 60th edition.  A graduate of 2014 Hakone Ekiden winner Toyo University, Shitara took the race in hand from the start, leading through 5 km in 14:38 just 2 seconds off the pace for the 1:28:52 course record set in 2014 by Toyo's Yuma Hattori.  Early company included Shitara's Konica Minolta teammate Masato Kikuchi, Toyo grad Kento Otsu (Team Toyota Kyushu) and current Toyo students Ryo Kuchimachi and Shun Sakuraoka.  Over the next 10 km the pack whittled down to just Shitara and Sakuraoka, 20 seconds off CR pace at 15 km in 44:15 with Otsu another 20 seconds back.

Around 21 km Shitara got a few strides on Sakuraoka, who began to fade rapidly and was overtaken by Otsu and ot…

http://kumanichi.com/fsports/marathon/2016/kiji/20160116001.xhtml
http://kumanichi.com/fsports/marathon/2016/kiji/20160127001.xhtml

translated and edited by Brett Larner

The organizers of the 5th Kumamoto-jo Marathon have announced the elite field for the Feb. 21 Kanaguri Memorial Kumanichi 30 km Road Race, held alongside the Kumamoto-jo Marathon as its elite race. Celebrating Kumanichi's 60th anniversary running, this year’s elite men’s field features strong young athletes who made an impact on the competitive Third and Fourth Stages at the New Year Ekiden corporate men’s national championships on Jan. 1. With university runners having won Kumanichi the last two years the corporate runners’ battle to get back on top will be one of the main draws this year.

The fresh young corporate league contingent is led by two members of the New Year Ekiden runner-up team Konica Minolta, Masato Kikuchi and Keita Shitara, along with local Chiharadai H.S. graduate Kento Otsu of New Year Ekiden 3…

by Brett Larner

Japan's major mid-summer distance series, the Hokuren Distance Challenge kicked off later than usual this week with meets in the towns of Shibetsu and Fukagawa on the northern island of Hokkaido, where distance runners from high school to pro head in the summer to escape the heat and put in mileage for the fall ekiden season.

At the series-opening Shibetsu Meet, the biggest news came in the men's 5000 m A-heat.  Last December Fukushima 10th-grader Hyuga Endo (Gakuho Ishikawa H.S.) exploded into the news with a 13:58.93, the fastest-ever 5000 m by a Japanese 16-year-old.  Now an 11th-grader but still 16 for another month, in Shibetsu Endo smashed his own record with a 13:50.51 PB to finish just behind 2014 Asian Games marathon silver medalist Kohei Matsumura (Team Mitsubishi HPS), the 9th-best time ever by a Japanese high schooler and 2nd-best by an under-18 Japanese runner.  Hilsawat Mamiyo Nuguse (Ethiopia/Team Yasukawa Denki), a newcomer to the Japanese corpo…

by Brett Larner
videos by toyosina2008, komazawaOB and Ekiden News

Track season continued to build up momentum with the first Nittai University Time Trials meet in Yokohama and a handful of other meets around the country.



The biggest news of the weekend was the debut of teen sprint star Yoshihide Kiryu in the Toyo University uniform. Kiryu ran third for Toyo's 4x100 m relay team at the Iwakabe Cup Eight University meet in Tokyo.  Starting his leg mid-pack Kiryu easily blew past the competition to put Toyo out front, but on the anchor leg national university record holder Chuo University retook the lead and pulled away for the win. Nevertheless, in his first race Kiryu helped the Toyo team take the school record from 39.99 to 39.69, a sure sign of what's to come. Post-race the entire Chuo team gave him a round of applause.



Kiryu's long distance teammates stayed at home in Saitama for the Five University Meet hosted by Daito Bunka University.  Strong winds prevented fast t…

update: The NYRR posted its own story on Takashi Ichida (Daito Bunka Univ.) and Ikuto Yufu (Komazawa Univ.) this morning.  Click here to read it.

by Brett Larner

November's Ageo City Half Marathon has been in an arms race with March's National University Men's Half Marathon Championships for the last few years, both races riding a swell in Japanese university men's distance running to battle for the title of world's deepest half marathon.  Two weeks ago the National University Half became the first race to break the 200 sub-66 barrier, but competition up front in Ageo remains thicker with a sub-62 course record and nearly twice as many men going sub-63 as at the National University Half. Driving the race up front in Ageo this time was, for the third year in a row, the chance for the two top Japanese collegiates to run the NYC Half Marathon in a relationship set up between the two races by JRN.

Two years ago Yuta Shitara and Kento Otsu of Hakone Ekiden course recor…

by Brett Larner
photo by Kazuyuki Sugimatsu

click here for Hakone Ekiden Day One report and results



Before 2009 Toyo University had only finished in the top three once in the history of Japan's biggest sporting event, the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden university men's road relay championships, all the way back in 1960.  In Hakone's 85th anniversary running in 2009, the tens of millions of fans who watch Hakone live on TV and along its ten-stage, 217.9 km course were witness to the birth of a legend as Toyo first-year Ryuji Kashiwabara singlehandly lifted the team to the winner's podium for the first time with a stunning course record on Hakone's most celebrated stage, the 23.4 km Fifth Stage with nearly 900 m of climb.  With Kashiwabara Toyo was almost untouchable at Hakone; he won the Fifth Stage all four years at Toyo and set stage records on it in three of them.  Every time he broke the record, Toyo took the overall win, transforming themselves from the likable underdogs…

by Brett Larner



Japan’s distance year hits its peak Jan. 2 and 3 with the 90th running of the biggest sporting event in the country, the Hakone Ekiden. 23 teams of ten Kanto Region university men each, three more teams than usual in honor of the anniversary year face off over the course of two days and 217.9 km on ten stages of from 18.5 km to 23.4 km in front of a live TV audience in the tens of millions with millions more lining the course, and short of an Olympic medal there is nothing more prestigious in Japanese athletics than a Hakone title.

The level of Kanto Region men’s distance running has increased rapidly over the last three years, with multiple course records at Hakone and both of the other Big Three university ekidens, October’s Izumo Ekiden and November’s National University Ekiden, and this year alone has seen national collegiate records for 10000 m and 30 km and near-misses for 5000 m and half marathon. The sheer numbers of collegiate men running quality times is …

by Brett Larner

This weekend is the first of two for the biggest meet in Japanese university athletics, the Kanto Regional University Track and Field Championships. Thanks to the presence of the legendary Hakone Ekiden the Kanto region or KGRR is the center of Japanese university men’s distance running, and its regional championships are both deeper and higher-quality than the National meet where a limited number of KGRR schools compete with universally weaker schools from other parts of the country.

With a 27:38.31 by 21-year-old Waseda University senior Suguru Osako last month at the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational, sub-28 runs from identical twin Toyo University seniors Keita and Yuta Shitara, both 21, at last week’s Golden Games in Nobeoka and much more there has been a rush of activity by Japan’s 18-22 set recently. It’s time for an update of JRN’s ongoing comparison of the best of this group with their counterparts in the United States’ NCAA, a comparison to which addition…

by Brett Larner
photos courtesy Photo Run / NYRR

Invited to race after finishing in the top two spots at last November's Ageo City Half Marathon, Kenta Murayama (Komazawa University) and Kento Otsu (Toyo University) ran the 2013 New York City Half Marathon on Mar. 17.  Up front through the slow 15:04 first 5 km, Otsu dropped back before the lead pack left Central Park while Murayama took the lead near halfway and stayed with the leaders including world-level medalists Wilson Kipsang (Kenya), Bernard Lagat (U.S.A.) and Dathan Ritzenhein (U.S.A.) through 15 km.  "I looked around at 15 km and couldn't believe some of the people I was still there with," Murayama told JRN post-race.

Falling behind with Kipsang's move at 15 km, he still managed to get into the top ten with a time of 1:02:02, exactly one minute off winner Kipsang and beating his hero Lagat by nearly 30 seconds.  Otsu, who suffered injury setbacks following January's Hakone Ekiden, ran 1:04:03 for 19…

By Chris Lotsbom
(c) 2013 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved

NEW YORK (14-Mar) -- Running Sunday's NYC Half feels like the opportunity of a lifetime for Kenta Murayama and Kento Otsu. For the tandem from Japan, the 21.1 kilometer race through Manhattan represents much more than a typical competition; it is a chance for the student-athletes to gain experience against some of the sport's best, including their idol, Bernard Lagat.

Back home in Japan, Murayama and Otsu are rivals on the collegiate circuit, representing Komazawa University and Toyo University, respectively. Having finished first and second at the Ageo City Half-Marathon last November, the pair earned invitations into Sunday's race as part of a program between the New York Road Runners and the Ageo City organizers.

"As a university student, to be invited to run abroad is a very important chance for me," said Otsu, 21, through a translator. "I am very happy about that. In terms of furthering my…

by Brett Larner

Four major races this weekend mark the end of Japan's winter road season, two domestic and two foreign.  On the home front, the National Corporate Half Marathon Championships lead the way.  2008 Kenyan national XC champion Gideon Ngatuny (Team Nissin Shokuhin) is the favorite, followed closely by last year's runner-up Jacob Wanjuki (Team Aichi Seiko) and, making a return to the half following a long injury, 2010 World Half Marathon Championships 9th-place Tomoya Onishi (Team Asahi Kasei).  Ten other men have PBs under 62 minutes, making for a thick front pack.  Notable debuts will come from track champions Yuichiro Ueno (Team S&B) and Taku Fujimoto (Team Toyota).

Course record holder Yukiko Akaba (Team Hokuren) is the favorite in the women's race as she tunes up for next month's London Marathon.  She faces young competition from Sakiko Matsumi (Team Daiichi Seimei) and Yuka Tokuda (Team Starts), with strong debuts expected from ekiden stars Yurie Do…