japan running news

The 70th running of the Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden happened over the start of the Golden Week holidays, a 3-day, 29-leg race covering 306.9 km around the northern prefecture of Yamagata. There used to be a lot more of these races where people from the prefecture run for their hometown teams on a Tour de Whatever prefecture or area it happens to be held in, but Yamagata's is one of the few to have survived this long. And amazingly enough, local broadcaster YBC live streamed the entire thing on Youtube. There aren't many corporate teams in the mostly rural area, so runners from the ND Software corporate team played a heavy role, its 2 best runners Masato Arao and Ryoma Takeuchi winning their stages on Day 2 with Takeuchi doubling to anchor the Kita-Murayama team to an overall 5th-place finish, and Koichi Shoji breaking the 2nd leg CR on Day 1 and winning the 2nd-to-last stage on Day 3 to play a key role in the Yamagata city team taking the overall win in 16:06:51, 3:09/km ...

Next weekend's Hokkaido Marathon has a good men's field lined up, with five sub-2:10 men and some interesting matchups. At the front is 2024 Osaka Marathon winner Kiyoto Hirabayashi , the winners of the 2024 and 2022 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon Derese Workneh and Yuki Nakamura , and 2023 Beppu-Oita runner-up Atsumi Ashiwa , with threats from two other race winners, 2022 Hokkaido champ Luka Musembi and Tokyo Olympics marathon trials winner Shogo Nakamura . Sub-61 half marathoner Kazuki Matsuyama is scheduled to debut, and if he or Hirabayashi actually start it will give the race a very different dynamic. The women's field is thinner, but 2018 World Half Marathon Championships bronze medalist Pauline Kamulu is on the list to make her debut. If she's for real nobody else in the field can touch her. If not, it'll probably be a head-to-head between the only sub-2:30 woman in the race, Yuri Mitsune , and Nanami Aoki , 2:30:01 on Osaka last year. Shiho Tachizako is ...

Tokyo Kokusai University 4th-year Vincent Yegon was named MVP of the 2023 Hakone Ekiden for his course record-breaking run on Hakone's 4th leg on Jan. 2 . Originally an alternate, Yegon was swapped in for fellow 4th-year Luka Musembi on race morning. Yegon ran 1:00:00 for the 20.9 km 4th leg, taking 30 seconds off the previous CR of 1:00:30 set by Yuya Yoshida of Aoyama Gakuin University in 2020. As a 1st-year Yegon broke the CR on Hakone's 3rd leg, following up with a CR on the competitive 2nd leg as a 2nd-year. That run earned him his first Hakone MVP award , making him the only non-Japanese athlete ever to receive the distinction. With his 4th leg CR this year Yegon now holds the records for the 2nd through 4th legs. "Thank you very much. I'm happy," he commented in Japanese. As a team Tokyo Kokusai University ultimately placed 11th , falling 1:32 behind 10th-placer Toyo University . It was Tokyo Kokusai's first time missing the 10-deep podium and a g...

Sapporo's Hokkaido Marathon is always a key developmental race on the Japanese calendar, giving top-level people experience training for and running a summer marathon, and in some recent years serving as a route to the MGC Race, Japan's Olympic marathon trials. That was the case in the race's return this year after cancelations in 2020 and 2021, with four men and one woman making the cut for the the 2024 Olympics MGC in September next year. The top 3 Japanese men had to clear 2:14 and 4th-6th needed 2:12 or better to make it. Pacers took a lead group of almost 50 through halfway on a steady pace around 2:10:30 in good conditions by summertime Sapporo standards, cool and thinly cloudy. Just past the half mark, debuting college student Luka Musembi (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) took off, taking his projected finish down to mid-2:09 and gapping the rest of the field. Dominic Nyairo (NTT Nishi Nihon) was the next to make a move, closing to within 10 seconds of Musembi but unable to ...

It was a busy weekend on the track across Japan. At Saturday's Kanaguri Memorial Meet  in Kumamoto, the biggest news came in the men's 1500 m where 17-year-old Keita Sato (Rakunan H.S.) ran 3:40.36, a new U18 national record, the 2nd-fastest ever by a Japanese high schooler, and 3rd-fastest-ever U20 mark. Sato took 4th after leading the first three laps, with two of the three people who finished ahead of him going under 3:40. Winner Kazuki Kawamura (Toenec) broke into the all-time Japanese top ten at 3:38.83 and Keisuke Morita (Komori Corp.) was 2nd in 3:39.37. Steeplechase specialist Kazuya Shiojiri  (Fujitsu) followed up his 10000 m win last month in Nobeoka with a 5000 m PB at Kanaguri, dropping a Kenyan trio led by Justus Kevasa  (Honda) for the win in 13:22.80. A total of thirteen people broke 13:40 across heats. Joan Kipkemoi  (Kyudenko) led Japan-based Africans to sweep the top five spots in the women's 5000 m in 15:30.45, with Ethiopian Burka Desta  ...

After a rough start to the season last month at the Izumo Ekiden , Tokai University lived up to its #1 ranking as it held off defending national champion Aoyama Gakuin University on the anchor stage of the National University Men's Ekiden to win its first national title in 16 years. In a lot of ways it was one of the more chaotic major university ekidens in recent memory, with almost every team that ended up on the eight-deep podium suffering at least one disastrous stage that saw one of its runners finish in the double digit placings on stage time. But over Nationals' full eight-stage, 106.8 km course these seemed to cancel each other out, the expected top nine teams all landing in the top ten with one unexpected interloper. A bizarrely slow First Stage, 15:20 through 5 km, resulted in a predictably blazing last 4.5 km, with last year's Second Stage winner Tomoya Ogikubo (Josai Univ.) getting away to hand off in 1st in 27:49 almost 10 seconds up on top two-ranked...

A wet and windy Saturday night featured high-level track time trial action all across the country. With the approach of the powerful Typhoon #24 the Saga Long Distance Time Trials meet was canceled, leaving Kyushu's runners home to wait the storm out. To the northeast, Hiroshima's Chugoku Jitsugyodan Long Distance Time Trials meet was far enough away to still be ahead of the worst of the wind and rain. Takuya Fujikawa (Chugoku Denryoku) ran the fastest 5000 m time their in 13:55.73, with up-and-coming marathoner  Kohei Futaoka (Kyudenko) leading the 10000 m results in 29:12.00. Further to the northwest, Yuma Hattori (Toyota) returned from a solid 1:01:40 PB at the Czech Republic's Usti nad Labem Half Marathon two weeks ago to win the Tokamachi Distance Carnival 's 10000 m. Hattori outkicked Kenyan teammate David Muhuhu (Toyota) to win in 28:39.57, the fastest time by a Japanese runner in Tokamachi's 30-year history. His alma mater Toyo University was a ma...