japan running news

by Brett Larner
The regional qualifier meets for next month's National High School Track and Field Championships took place across Japan between June 17 and 20. Of particular note as an illustration of the depth and development of Japanese distance running at the high school level, the girls' 3000 m event featured thirty Japanese and three Kenyan girls under 9:30 between nine regional meets over the weekend. By contrast, according to the ARRS database only four American high school girls broke 9:30 for 3000 m in all of 2010, with three so far this season.
Kenyan Susan Wylim of Sera H.S. was the top of the crowd with a meet record 9:03.89 at the Chugoku regional meet. Sera's Charles Ndirangu also won the boys' 5000 m with a meet record of 13:44.61. Sera H.S. is most well-known for producing Bitan Karoki (Kenya/Team S&B), who earlier this season won Stanford Univesity's Cardinal Invitational 10000 m in stunning style.
Three other girls, all Japanese, broke 9:10 …

by Brett Larner
click here for photos of the race

With ideal weather across most of the country, Kenyans Dishon Karukuwa (Team Aisan Kogyo) and Titus Waroru (Chinzei Gakuin H.S.) ran through light rain to take down the course records in the men's half marathon and high school boys' 10 km divisions at the 62nd running of the Kanaguri Hai Tamana Half Marathon Mar. 6 in Tamana, Kumamoto. Back on the roads after running January's Osaka International Women's Marathon, last year's runner-up Hiroko Miyauchi (Team Kyocera), one of the nine Japanese women training in Christchurch, New Zealand at the time of the recent major earthquake, took the women's 10 km by a wide margin.
The 19 year-old Karukuwa ran 1:02:20 to break the standing half marathon course record by 18 seconds. He was the first Kenyan winner in Tamana history and only the third non-Japanese to ever take the title. Runner-up Yukinobu Nakazaki (Team Toyota Kyushu) ran a strong 1:03:09, fast enough to have w…