japan running news

by Brett Larner

While the popularity and prestige of the Hakone Ekiden has concentrated Japan's university men's distance talent within the Tokyo-centered Kanto Region, women's university runners are more geographically dispersed. If there is one stronghold it must be the Kansai Region around Kyoto and Osaka, home of the dominant Ritsumeikan University women's team and their cross-town rivals Bukkyo University. The two schools meet again this weekend at the six-stage, 38.6 km Morinomiyako Ekiden, the first of the season's two national university women's ekidens.

Ritsumeikan is the three-time defending Morinomiyako champion and has qualified more than any other school in the field, running in the last twenty of Morinomiyako's twenty seven editions. Ritsumeikan's winning streak exactly coincides with the career of its ace runner Kazue Kojima. Kojima is the best university runner of her generation, a multiple national champion who has never lost an ekiden st…

by Brett Larner

The Sapporo International Half Marathon has released the complete field for this year's race on July 5. And it's going to be a great one. In one corner, half marathon world record holder and Beijing Olympics gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru (Team Sam). In the other, three-time winner and the only man to break one hour on the Sapporo course, Mekubo Mogusu (Team Aidem).

The two Kenyans came to Japan at the same time in high school, with Mogusu always a step behind in their high school careers but always gunning for Wanjiru and his records and unafraid to say so. After high school Mogusu chose university for the chance to run the Hakone Ekiden, while Wanjiru went pro and became....Samuel Wanjiru. This will be the pair's first meeting of their adult lives and despite a serious divot in Mogusu's training following a car accident early in the spring it's all but certain to go out very hard. Last year Masato Kihara (Chuo Gakuin Univ.) pushed Mogusu well under wo…

by Brett Larner

Brett Larner, Toyokazu Yoshimura and Wilson Kipketer at the finish of the 2009 Copenhagen Marathon. Photo by Piia Doyle (DMG).

Update 5/29: I missed Daniel Gitau's 800m record at the Kanto Championships and have updated the summary below.

I just got back from Copenhagen yesterday. There was a fair amount of overseas action featuring Japanese runners and at least one big domestic meet this past weekend that I couldn't cover at the time, but for the sake of thoroughness I wanted to put up a few summaries. I'll go in reverse chronological order.

Los Angeles Marathon
Men's marathon 60+ world record holder Yoshihisa Hosaka ran the L.A. Marathon in 2:39:31. Although he fell 3 minutes 2 seconds shy of breaking his own world record set in February's Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon, Hosaka was a highly creditable 27th overall and the 19th place male finisher. Needless to say, he won his age group. The June issue of Running Times magazine contains an interview with H…

by Brett Larner


Daniel Gitau (Nihon Univ.) wins the windy 10000 m at the 2009 Kanto Regional University Track and Field Championships. Click here for complete race video via Flotrack.

Kenyan fourth-year Daniel Gitau (Nihon Univ.) followed in the footsteps of the now-graduated Mekubo Mogusu (Team Aidem) with a double win in the men's 1500 m and 10000 m on the first weekend of the 2009 Kanto Regional University Track and Field Championships May 16 and 17 at Tokyo's National Stadium. Harsh, windy conditions prevented fast times, particularly in the 10000 m, but Gitau had an easy win in the 1500 m in 3:44.18.

Setting off at 2:45/km pace in the 10000 m with Mogusu watching in the stands, the 2008 national university 10000 m champion Gitau worked together with first-year teammate Benjamin Gando, Mogusu's successor Cosmas Ondiba (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) and Japanese star Ryuji Kashiwabara (Toyo Univ.) to battle the wind. As the pace slowed midway Gitau broke away at around 5000 m, …

by Brett Larner

The team representing Tokyo won its 2nd straight victory at the East Japan Women's Ekiden in Fukushima Prefecture on Nov. 9, outlasting a surprise challenge from the Niigata Prefectural team to take the 2008 title. The East Japan Women's Ekiden features a 9-stage, 42.195 km course and teams made up of star professional, university, high school and junior high school runners from the 18 prefectures in eastern Japan and is one of a series of regional precursors to January's All-Japan Interprefectural Women's Ekiden.

Tokyo won comfortably last year but this year was threatened over the entire course by the Niigata team, which had never placed higher than 8th in the event's 23 previous runnings. Niigata's Chiaki Takagi wore down Tokyo's Rie Takayoshi to win the 6 km 1st stage, breaking away at 4 km. Takagi finished the stage in 19:08 to Takayoshi's 19:11.

Tokyo's Chisa Nishio overtook Niigata's Moeno Nakamura with 1 km to go on the 4 km…

by Brett Larner

After a slow start which saw two-time defending champion Ritsumeikan University in 7th at the end of the first stage of the 38.6 km, six-stage National University Women's Ekiden Championships, also known as the Morinomiyako Ekiden, the school moved up through the field through the following three stages to take first the lead and then its third consecutive national title and fifth national win in six years. Buoyed by a stellar stage-record performance by third-year star Kazue Kojima on the third leg, Ritsumeikan runners clocked stage records on the fourth and fifth legs as well and won in 2:06:53, just off the course record which Ritsumeikan set last year. Rivals Bukkyo University once again had to settle for 2nd, finishing 1:15 behind the winner in 2:08:08. 2005 winner Meijo University rounded out the podium positions with a 2:08:47 finish in 3rd.

Ritsumeikan's win essentially amounted to a simple display of power. Despite five of the six members of last year…

translated and edited by Brett Larner

The 26th All-Japan University Women's Ekiden, also known as the Morinomiyako Ekiden, takes place Oct. 26 in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. Two-time defending champion Ritsumeikan University is set to win a third-straight title, with four schools presenting potential challenges. Brief profiles of each school follow.

Ritsumeikan University
Ritsumeikan University, alma mater of professionals including 2008 Sapporo International Half Marathon winner Yuri Kano (Second Wind AC), is the dominant women's running school in Japan, winning the Western Japan Regional Ekiden title every year since 2003 and the National Invitational Ekiden all five years of the event's existence thus far. Ritsumeikan won the 2003 and 2004 National University Women's Ekiden titles but in trying to become the second school in Morinomiyako history to win a third consecutive championship lost out to rivals Meijo University in 2005. Ritsumeikan came back to win in 2006, the…