japan running news

The last big race of the year is Monday's Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden , the season-ending national championship race for university women. Between Mt. Fuji and October's Morinomiyako Ekiden , up to this season Meijo University was undefeated in 13-straight championship ekiden races, with 7-straight wins at Morinomiyako and 6 at Mt. Fuji. But nothing lasts forever, and at this year's Morinomiyako the last big dynasty school before Meijo, Ritsumeikan University , winner at Morinomiyako from 2011 to 2015 and at Mt. Fuji from 2013 to 2017, outran a flailing Meijo squad to take the win for the first time in 9 years. Its runners took stage wins on 3 of the 6 legs, Yumi Yamamoto breaking the Second Stage CR, Tomo Muramatsu the Third Stage CR, and anchor Makoto Tsuchiya outrunning Meijo captain Nanase Tanimoto for the win. Meijo's big names, especially Tanimoto and Nanaka Yonezawa , have been off their best most of this season, and it showed when they were only 4th at Mori...

Fresh off a sub-31 PB at last month's 10000 m National Championships, Haruka Kokai ran down Kotona Ota of longtime leader Hyogo on the anchor stage to give the Miyagi prefecture team its first National Women's Ekiden title in 29 years. Women-only half marathon NR holder Rino Goshima went out hard to put earthquake and tsunami-hit Ishikawa in the lead by 35 seconds on the 6.0 km First Stage, but a Second Stage win by 1500 m and 5000 m NR holder Nozomi Tanaka put Hyogo into a lead it held until midway through the final stage. Shizuoka and Chiba both spent time in 2nd and at times closed on Hyogo only to get dropped again. The 4.1075 km Fifth Stage was especially good, with sub-32 collegian Risa Yamazaki of Chiba running down high school 1st-year Kairi Ikeno for the lead only to get retaken by Ikeno, with both breaking the 1995-era CR for the stage. Behind them, Miyagi was working its way up through the field, improving its position every stage except the Third until Y...

Sunday's other big race in Hokkaido was the Hakodate Half Marathon and Marathon , where members of Japan's marathon squad for August's Budapest World Championships and qualifiers for October's MGC Race Olympic marathon trials tune up for their races. In the men's half marathon, Shun Sadakata held off Evans Kipkemei to take the win by 2 seconds in a PB and CR 1:01:37. Hideyuki Tanaka took 3rd in 1:01:40, with Dan Kiplangat the only other runner under 62 in 1:01:54 for 4th. Half marathon NR holder Yusuke Ogura was 6th in 1:02:38, and close behind him was marathon NR holder Kengo Suzuki , 7th in 1:02:46. For Suzuki it was the first time he'd made it to the starting line of a race since the March, 2022 Tokyo Marathon, and as the first MGC qualifier to finish in Hakodate his performance there was good enough to generate a collective sigh of relief. Budapest marathon team member Kazuya Nishiyama didn't have the same kind of day, only 15th in 1:03:58. Women-o...

With Sunday's Tartan Ottawa International Marathon the qualifying window for the Oct. 15 MGC Race , Japan's marathon trials for the 2024 Paris Olympics, came to a close. When the JAAF introduced this format for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a total of 15 women and 34 men made the tough standards. This time, with identical standards for women and even tougher ones for men , 29 women and 67 men made it, double the numbers on both sides. At the MGC Race, the top two finishers will earn guaranteed places on the Paris team. The 3rd placer will have a provisional spot, with the 4th and 5th placers named provisional alternates. If anyone runs under TBA time standards at one of the winter 2023-24 domestic marathons they'll have the chance to steal the 3rd spot on the team from the 3rd placer at the MGC Race, keeping those races relevant and the whole lead-up to the Olympics exciting. Among women, all three members of the Tokyo Olympics marathon team, Mao Ichiyama (Shiseido), Ayuko Su...

Last year's winner and all-time #2 woman Ruth Chepngetich returns to the Nagoya Women's Marathon on Mar. 12 for another taste of its $250,000 prize money for 1st place. Nagoya is the world's biggest women-only marathon, and along with Chepngetich 2021 Valencia Marathon winner Nancy Jelagat and Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist Molly Seidel lend it a bit of cachet. But overall it's a very weak field for a platinum label race, one of the weakest in Nagoya history. 6 of the top 7 Japanese women entered, Ayuko Suzuki , Mao Uesugi , Mizuki Tanimoto , Yuka Suzuki , Chiharu Ikeda and Mirai Waku , have already qualified for October's MGC Race Olympic marathon trials, so while the Japanese group will probably try to run 2:19 or 2:20 however fast Chepngetich goes, there's not even a lot of drama around Nagoya being the last domestic chance to make the trials. The only real drama on paper is whether snakebitten Tokyo Olympics marathon trials winner and 30 km NR holder Ho...

Despite Osaka being named to a preliminary state of emergency as Japan goes deeper into its omicron wave, this weekend's Osaka International Women's Marathon and Osaka Half Marathon are going ahead on their traditional public road courses. Osaka Women's is Japan's last remaining purely elite marathon, and with the mass-participation Osaka Marathon moving to the last weekend of February this year and targeting WA platinum label status the writing has to be on the wall for its future. It just doesn't seem sustainable to have this race four weeks before the start of a three-week run of platinum label races, one in the same city, one in Tokyo and one in Nagoya. But for this year, at least, Osaka Women's clearly has the support up top in the local government to keep moving, and that counts for something. Like the 2021 race, despite its name it's a Japanese-only field with male pacers, kind of inevitably on the first point given Japan's ongoing border fortif...

The organizers of next month's Osaka International Women's Marathon have announced the invited field of 43 for Japan's last remaining purely elite marathon. Like the 2021 race, despite the event's name it's a Japanese-only field with male pacers, kind of inevitably on the first point given Japan's ongoing border fortification but a bit regrettably on the second. For a domestic field it's pretty good, all 17 of the women in it who've run under 2:35 in the last three years having done it either here or in Nagoya. 2020 winner and unlucky Olympic alternate  Mizuki Matsuda  (Daihatsu) is the favorite, with support from Sayaka Sato  (Sekisui Kagaku), the 4th-fastest Japanese woman in 2020 and 2021, 2019's fastest Reia Iwade  (Adidas), and 2021's 3rd and 4th-placers Yukari Abe  (Shimamura) and Mao Uesugi  (Starts).  Six other women in the field have run under the 2:27:00 B-standard for qualification for the 2024 Olympic marathon trials, including curr...

On Dec. 22 the Osaka International Women's Marathon announced the elite field for its 40th running on Jan. 31, 2021 at a live streamed press conference. Like Fukuoka, Osaka is going ahead with a reduced domestic field of just 99 entrants and no international athletes. Tokyo Olympics marathon team members Mao Ichiyama  (Wacoal), winner of this year's Nagoya Women's Marathon in a women-only national record of 2:20:29, and trials winner and 30 km national record holder Honami Maeda  (Tenmaya) lead the entry list. With none of Osaka's usual international pacers, Osaka will use male pacers to try to set things up for a shot at Mizuki Noguchi 's 2:19:12 national record. The unsponsored Reia Iwade  is the only other athlete who could realistically try to go with them, and for the rest of the field, which includes last year's 2nd-place Japanese woman Haruka Yamaguchi  (AC Kita), there will be other men to pace at around 2:25. With ten women from 2:25 to 2:29 on the l...

A teammate of last week's Japanese Olympic marathon trials 1st and 3rd placers Honami Maeda and Rei Ohara , Mizuki Tanimoto kicked off the Doha World Championships with a 7th-place finish in the women's marathon. Starting off overly conservatively with Worlds teammates Madoka Nakano and Ayano Ikemitsu , Tanimoto was far behind the lead pack that included all three eventual medalists after just one time around the six-lap course. Hitting halfway in 1:20:11 and 33rd place, Tanimoto was one of the few people in the race to negative split, making a huge jump in position from 25 to 30 km and working her way up to land 7th in 2:39:09, just over six minutes behind winner Ruth Chepngetich (Kenya). Nakano finished 11th in 2:42:39 seconds behind 10th-placer Un Ok Jo (North Korea). In a field of just 68 starters, 28 women dropped out partway, including all five Ethiopian-born athletes. Struggling early, Ikemitsu hung on through 30 km before stepping off the course. In qualif...

Following the end of the qualification period for the 2019 Doha World Championships , the JAAF announced additions to the initial Japanese National Team roster released earlier in the summer. Along with the additions, the JAAF made public that Abdul Hakim Sani Brown (Univ. of Florida) will not run the 200 m in order to focus on the 100 m and relay, and that Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu), the only Japanese man to have cleared the Doha standard, will not race due to an apparent injury following a fall last week in Zagreb . Final changes to the team roster, if any, are expected to be announced Sept. 17. Japanese National Team, Doha World Championships as of Sept. 11, 2019 times listed are best within qualifying window Women Hurdles 100 m Hurdles  - Asuka Terada (Pasona Group) - 12.97 100 m Hurdles - Ayako Kimura (Edion) - 13.11 Long Distance 5000 m  - Nozomi Tanaka (Toyota Jidoshokki TC) - 15:15.80 5000 m - Tomoka Kimura (Shiseido) - 15:19.99 5000 m /  10000 ...

The JAAF announced the lineups today for the Japanese women's and men's marathon teams for this fall's Doha World Championships . Having scheduled Japan's new MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials event for two weeks before the World Championships the JAAF has specified that nobody can double, meaning that, including alternates, three of the four women and all four men named would have to give up a chance at being part of the Tokyo Olympics in order to get a guaranteed spot on a lesser national team. That means a team drawn from the middle and lower end of the list of trials qualifiers, a good mix of relatively inexperienced younger athletes likely to develop further for the 2024 Paris Olympics, mid-career runners without much chance of making the top few spots at the trials, and aging veterans who've shrewdly sussed out that being on a national team is better for their brands than going for a higher-level one they know they can't make. It's a B-team t...

The 37th Sanyo Ladies Road Race took place Dec. 23 in Okayama on a course starting and finishing at City Lights Stadium. In the half marathon division, MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials qualifier Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) won her first Sanyo title in 1:09:12, the fastest time by a Japanese woman in over 5 years. Dropping the lead pack just a kilometer into the race, Maeda ran solo the entire way to become the only Japanese woman under 1:10 this year. Australian Ellie Pashley was 2nd in 1:09:20, with Maeda's teammate and fellow MGC qualifier Rei Ohara (Tenmaya) 3rd in 1:10:37. National record holder Kayoko Fukushi (Wacoal) was 6th in 1:11:32. Both Ohara and Fukushi are scheduled to run January's Osaka International Women's Marathon . In the 10 km division, Kenyan Grace Kimanzi (Starts) equalled the 31:54 course record set in 2007 by future Olympic marathon gold medalist Tiki Gelana of Ethiopia. Tenmaya runners Sara Miyake and Mai Nishiwaki were a distant 2nd ...

A veteran and a first-timer made the headlines from the opposite ends of the spectrum at Sunday's Hokkaido Marathon in Sapporo, Hokkaido, the first race in the second season of qualifying for the MGC Race, Japan's new 2020 Olympic trials race to be held in September next year. A passing typhoon brought cooler than usual weather to Hokkaido and a better-than-usual chance of hitting the sub-2:13 and sub-2:30 qualifying marks most Olympic aspirants would have to clear. The men's race was simply a race of attrition, with no dramatic changes in pace or sudden moves, just a large pack of motivated people going out mid-2:11 pace in a race where only two men have ever cleared 2:12, neither of them Japanese. In the pack, 59:47 Kenyan Paul Kuira (Konica Minolta), the promising young Shohei Otsuka (Kyedenko), championships marathoner extraordinaire Kentaro Nakamoto (Yasukawa Denki),2016 Sydney Marathon winner Tomohiro Tanigawa (Konica Minolta), luckless veteran Naoki Okamoto ...

The 2018 Hakodate Marathon and Half Marathon took place July 1 in Hakodate, Hokkaido. Despite heavy rain on and off throughout the race, 6767 people out of 7139 starters finished. The third year Hakodate has had a full marathon division, 3147 people started in the full and 3992 in the half. Both races began and finished at Chiyogadai Field, the half starting at 9:00 a.m. and the full going off at 10:00. As rain fell the runners were cheered on by local supporters lining the streets of the western parts of the city and the coastal areas popular with tourists. Volunteers at aid stations handed out local delicacies like mini sashimi bowls and cold salty ramen to enthusiastic participants. Yuya Yamashita (26, Sunbelx) took four minutes off the course record to win the men's full marathon in 2:18:27. "The hills in the second half were tough, but I'm really happy to have won it," he said post-race, his face full of smiles. Kenyan Paul Kuira (Konica Minolta) won a c...

Japan’s domestic elite marathon season wraps up Sunday with the Nagoya Women’s Marathon , the final race in the first season of qualification for the MGC Race , Japan’s new 2020 Olympic trials marathon to be held in late 2019. In its first season the MGC Race has succeeded in unifying Japan’s disparate national team selection races into what feels like an actual series, one that fans have gotten excited about and which has, at least on the men’s side, driven performances to a higher level. As of right now, thirteen Japanese men have met the MGC Race’s strict qualification criteria, six of them at the Tokyo Marathon alone. Heading into Nagoya only three women have qualified . Will we see another rush of qualifiers this weekend? On paper it could happen. Since its rebranding as the world’s largest women-only marathon, Nagoya has consistently produced among the best depth-at-quality in the world, its course, weather and fields conducive to seeing a lot of people running fast times. In...

The Nagoya Women's Marathon is the largest women-only marathon in the world, one with a long history as an elite race and adapting to the times with a mass-participation field of 20,000. The last few years it has seen a series of dynamic, high-level performances by top Japanese women, from Sairi Maeda 's 2:22:48 in 2015 to the 2:23:19 to 2:23:20 sprint finish battle between Tomomi Tanaka and Rei Ohara in 2016 to Yuka Ando 's stellar 2:21:36 debut and teammate Mao Kiyota 's 2:23:47 breakthrough last year. Maeda, Ohara and Kiyota all return this year to face the Kenyan trio of Lucy Kabuu , Valary Jemeli and Flomena Cheyech Daniel . Kabuu went to high school in Japan before moving on to the big leagues, but she hasn't finished a marathon since her 2:20:21 in Dubai 2015. Cheyech also used to be based in Japan as is a familiar face here, winning the last two Saitama International Marathons. Jemeli is making her Japanese debut, and with a 2:21:57 win in Prague and ...

Running on his 29th birthday, Takuya Noguchi (Team Konica Minolta) became just the sixth Japanese man to ever win a marathon outside Japan in a sub-2:10 time as he shot down favorites and past champions Kenneth Mungara (Kenya) and Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) to win the Gold Coast Airport Marathon in a 2-minte-plus PB of 2:08:59. In the women's race #1-ranked Abebech Bekele (Ethiopia) became only the second Ethiopian woman to ever win Gold Coast as she took more than a minute off the year-old course record to win in 2:25:34. Pre-race Noguchi's wife Risa Takenaka (Team Shiseido), the 2015 Gold Coast women's winner and running again this year, told JRN that he was in better shape than she was and had come in part to try to outgun Kawauchi. With a good season behind him including a 1:02:37 half marathon PB and 2:11:04 marathon PB in February and a 1:02:21 half marathon best in May Noguchi had the momentum to see that through. Two-time defending champ Mung...