http://www.hochi.co.jp/sports/etc/20140417-OHT1T50093.html
translated and edited by Brett Larner
video by naoki620
A new wind is blowing on the road to Hakone as the newly-minted Obirin University ekiden team becomes fully operational this year. In April last year Stephen Mayaka, 41, who wowed the nation at the Hakone Ekiden as a student at Yamanashi Gakuin University, became head coach at Obirin. Devoting his first year to recruiting, this spring Mayaka welcomed sixteen athletes including Kenyan Lazarus Motanya Asimundi to the new program. The fresh-faced team made up entirely of first-years is dead-set on making the main event at Hakone before they graduate four years from now.
The sound of feet striking Obirin's cherry tree-lined track in Sagamihara is the music of hope and anticipation. The "single-batch" team of sixteen is finally underway on the road that Coach Mayaka has plotted out for them. Without distance runners on the school's track team when he joine…
translated and edited by Brett Larner
video by naoki620
A new wind is blowing on the road to Hakone as the newly-minted Obirin University ekiden team becomes fully operational this year. In April last year Stephen Mayaka, 41, who wowed the nation at the Hakone Ekiden as a student at Yamanashi Gakuin University, became head coach at Obirin. Devoting his first year to recruiting, this spring Mayaka welcomed sixteen athletes including Kenyan Lazarus Motanya Asimundi to the new program. The fresh-faced team made up entirely of first-years is dead-set on making the main event at Hakone before they graduate four years from now.
The sound of feet striking Obirin's cherry tree-lined track in Sagamihara is the music of hope and anticipation. The "single-batch" team of sixteen is finally underway on the road that Coach Mayaka has plotted out for them. Without distance runners on the school's track team when he joine…