by Brett Larner
Relative newcomer Josai University had a strong showing at the 2008 Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, a 20 km road race held Oct. 18 in western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park to select non-seeded teams for the 2009 Hakone Ekiden. Josai won the Yosenkai for the 2nd year in a row despite a mediocre run by its ace, 3rd year Yuta Takahashi. 12 other teams likewise qualified for January's Hakone, the Kanto regional men's university 2-day ekiden championships and the most popular race in Japan.
In a typical year, Hakone features 19 university teams and 1 select team made up of top runners from Kanto-area schools which failed to qualify. The top 10 finishing schools are seeded for the following year's Hakone with the remaining teams having to run the Yosenkai to requalify. In the Yosenkai, universities may field teams of up to 12 runners. All runners run an open 20 km race, with the aggregate time of a school's top 10 finishers determining the team finishing order. For the …
Relative newcomer Josai University had a strong showing at the 2008 Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, a 20 km road race held Oct. 18 in western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park to select non-seeded teams for the 2009 Hakone Ekiden. Josai won the Yosenkai for the 2nd year in a row despite a mediocre run by its ace, 3rd year Yuta Takahashi. 12 other teams likewise qualified for January's Hakone, the Kanto regional men's university 2-day ekiden championships and the most popular race in Japan.
In a typical year, Hakone features 19 university teams and 1 select team made up of top runners from Kanto-area schools which failed to qualify. The top 10 finishing schools are seeded for the following year's Hakone with the remaining teams having to run the Yosenkai to requalify. In the Yosenkai, universities may field teams of up to 12 runners. All runners run an open 20 km race, with the aggregate time of a school's top 10 finishers determining the team finishing order. For the …