japan running news

Like girls' race winner Nagano Higashi H.S. , Fukushima's Gakuho Ishikawa H.S. boys took the lead on the first leg of the National High School Ekiden and held it the rest of the way, taking 24 seconds off the CR to win their first-ever national title in an incredible 2:00:36 for 42.195 km in 7 legs. Yota Mashiko led off by slicing 23 seconds off the fastest-ever time by a Japanese-born athlete on the 10.0 km opening stage, outrunning main rival Haruki Niizuma of Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. by 20 seconds to take the stage title in 28:20. Second runner Hirotaka Wakata lost 5 seconds, but a stage win on the Third Stage from Ryo Kurimura put Gakuho Ishikawa up to 54 seconds ahead of its toughest competition, Sendai Ikuei H.S. Its next two runners Shunto Sato and Ikumi Sueda took 3rd on their stages, losing some ground to Sendai Ikuei but raising the prospect of something that hadn't been seriously considered before. When Sueda handed off to 6th runner Mahiro Hoashi Gakuho I...

The Nagano Higashi H.S. girls pulled off a perfect repetition of their start-to-finish win at last year's National High School Ekiden , taking the lead on the first leg again this time and never letting go. Opening runner Nami Kawakami won the 6.0 km First Stage by 2 seconds in 19:06, 2nd runner Haruna Tabata extended it to 12 seconds, and 3rd runner Airi Mashiba added another 30 seconds to the lead with a massive 9:06 CR for the 3.0 km leg, beating every Kenyan on the stage and everyone who had run it before. Nagano Higashi's last 2 runners Yui Honda and Rena Imai both lost some ground, but with both of them still running the 3rd-fastest times on their stages there wasn't really any risk of anyone catching them. Imai brought Nagano Higashi home in 1:06:30 for the 21.0975 km course, just missing the overall CR by 4 seconds but still a dominant performance from an all-Japanese lineup. 3rd last year, Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. got off to a slow start but spend the ...

110 teams took part in the 72nd National Oga Ekiden in Akita Saturday, with 30 teams in the open division, 12 universities, 44 high school boys' teams and 24 high school girls' teams. The Shingenden Kogyo corporate team won the open division for the 2nd year in a row, with Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University winning the 7-stage, 64.8 km university division in 3:14:28. In the 5-stage, 21.0975 km high school girls' race, Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. took the win in 1:10:43. Right from the start it was a tough race against Sendai Ikuei H.S. , which fielded 3 teams. Ritsumeikan Uji's lead runner Yui Ueda and Sendai Ikuei A's Rikka Kuroda both clocked 14:09, and a great stage-winning run from 2nd runner Nodoka Ashida put Ritsumeikan Uji out front. But Sendai Ikuei B's Miriam Njeri closed down the lead from 1:14 to 24 seconds on the 3rd leg, and her teammate Non Tachibana rode that momentum to overtake Ritsumeikan Uji for the lead. It came down to the anchor...

While the girls' race was a blowout by 2022 champ Nagano Higashi H.S. , the boys' race at Sunday's National High School Ekiden was a tense battle of turnover that saw all of the final top four teams take a stab at leading. 2023 3rd-placer Yachiyo Shoin H.S. handled the first 2 of the 7 stages in the 42.195 km race, with lead runner Rui Suzuki delivering a bold run on the 10.0 km First Stage that produced the fastest-ever time by a Japanese runner on the stage, 28:43, and put Yachiyo Shoin 29 seconds out front. Last year's Fifth Stage CR breaker Tetsu Suzuki ran Yachiyo Shoin down to put 2023 champ Saku Chosei H.S. into 1st on the 8.1075 km Third Stage, but Genta Sugano of last year's 8th-placer Sendai Ikuei H.S. had other plans and took the lead on the 8.0875 km Fourth Stage. Smiling and fist pumping to the crowd almost the entire way, Taketo Tsukada of last year's 6th-placer Omuta H.S. moved up from 3rd to 1st by 2 seconds over Saku Chosei on the 3.0 k...

2022 National High School Ekiden girls' champion Nagano Higashi H.S. was back in force after a 5th-place finish last year, leading start to finish to win this year's national title Sunday in Kyoto. Lead runner Airi Mashiba kicked it off with a 19:30 stage win on the 6.0 km opening leg, something that head coach Fumio Yokouchi said later that he hadn't been expecting. That ended up being Nagano Higashi's only individual stage win in the 5-leg, 21.0975 km race, but the rest of its team ran well enough to hold a lead that was never less than 11 seconds but never more than 21. Last year's 4th-placer Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. spent most of the race in 2nd, but over the second half of the race Sendai Ikuei H.S. , 2nd last year by just 1 second, came from further back to run Kunei down on the anchor stage thanks in big part to a critical stage win on the 4th leg by Tsubomi Tezuka that put anchor Aoi Hosokawa in position to catch Kunei's Mizuki Oda . Nagano Higashi ...

The National Track and Field Championships in Niigata were the main event this weekend, but up north where it's cooler there were three important road races.   Chuo University won the 7-stage, 66.2 km university men's race at Saturday's 71st Oga Ekiden in Akita. Hakone Ekiden winner Aoyama Gakuin University led on the first two stages, but on the 7.5 km Third Stage Chuo's Rei Yamahira took over the top spot and never let go. Chuo won in 3:22:42, with Aoyama Gakuin ultimately a minute and a half back in 3:24:12. Tokyo Kokusai University was a close 3rd in 3:24:53. Running the same distance, the Shingenden corporate team was the top placer in the open division in 3:31:06, well back from 4th-place university team Toyo University . Omuta H.S. won the 7-stage, 49.5 km high school boys' division in 2:30:10, with Sendai Ikuei H.S. taking the top 2 spots in the 5-stage, 21.3 km high school girls' race, its A-team winning in 1:08:56. Complete results here . At th...

It has been learned that a plan has been put forth to further restrict the length of the stages that non-Japanese runners can run at the National High School Ekiden and its regional qualifying races starting next year. In the 7-stage, 42.195 km boys' race the plan calls for them to be restricted to the two 5 km stages and the two 3 km stages, or to only the two 3 km stages. In the 5-stage, 21.0975 km girls' race they would be restricted to the 4.0975 km Second Stage and the two 3 km stages, or to only the two 3 km stages. The National High School Ekiden boys' race began in 1950, with a girls' race added in 1989. No restrictions on non-Japanese athletes were in place up to 2007, and teams that had them typically ran them on the longest stage of the race, the 10 km First Stage for boys and the 6 km First Stage for girls. But as the number of highly talented international students increased, the race's overall outcome started to become predetermined by the end of the...

On Feb. 21 Teikyo Teika University announced that former Sendai Ikuei H.S. head coach and Juntendo University alum Junichi Seino , 38, will take over as the new head coach of its women's ekiden team starting Mar. 1. As an athlete Seino was a member of Sendai Ikuei's winning team at the 2001 National High School Ekiden during his second year, and of Juntendo's winning team at the 2007 Hakone Ekiden his fourth year there. After graduating from Juntendo he served as head coach at Sendai Ikuei from 2008 to 20012, then as assistant coach at the Sekisui Kagaku women's corporate team from 2014 to 2018. Following that he worked in sales for home builder Sekisui Heim. With a proven record of achievement as a coach and athlete and business experience outside athletics, Teikyo Teika felt that Seino was the ideal choice to lead its women's ekiden team, launched in 2018, to its first National University Women's Ekiden appearance. Located in Adachi ward, Tokyo, the school...

The National High School Ekiden took place Dec. 25 in Kyoto with a live nationwide ad-free broadcast on NHK . In the girls' race , Nagano Higashi H.S. ran a perfect second half to run down 2021 national champ Sendai Ikuei H.S. on the anchor stage for its first-ever national title. In the boys' race , Kurashiki H.S. broke the overall course record by 8 seconds to win for the 3rd time in the race's 73-year history, with runner-up Saku Chosei H.S. running the fastest-ever time by an all-Japanese team thanks in large part to a brilliant run from 5000 m H.S. NR holder Hiroto Yoshioka . 7th last year, the Nagano Higashi girls got off to a good start with leading runner Kanoko Nawa 4th and just 6 seconds off the lead. Sendai Ikuei's Daisy Jerop put the defending champs into the lead on the second leg, with its next two runners Misaki Nagaoka and Kurea Watanabe holding that position. But a stage win from Nagano Higashi's fourth runner Yuka Sato cut Sendai Ikuei...

Corporate women and junior high school students have already had their nationally-televised national championship ekidens, but tomorrow's National High School Ekiden in Kyoto kicks off the busiest part of the year, with 5 days of championship ekiden racing in the span of 10 days. NHK broadcasts high school Nationals live and ad-free on Dec. 25, with the girls' race starting at 10:20 a.m. and the boys at 12:30 p.m. local time. There's not likely to be any internationally-available streaming, but get a VPN and you should be good. With JRN's holiday travel plans canceled because of the weather in the PNW, we'll probably be covering both races live on @JRNLive . Buy us a coffee to help us get through the day. The top high school teams in Japan would do pretty well in the NCAA on both the girls' and boys' sides, meaning two high-level races. In the girls' race, 21.0975 km in five legs, Sendai Ikuei H.S. won in 1:07:16 by over a minute last year but is d...

After cancelations in 2020 and 2021, the Ogi Ekiden in Akita returned Saturday for its 69th edition. A traditional race with a tough and hilly course, it is a standard midsummer event on the calendar for most of the country's top schools. Toyo University won the 7-stage, 64.7 km university division in 3:16:54. Toyo in 3rd was 14 seconds behind leader Chuo University 's A-team after the 13.4 km First Stage, dropping to 4th and 43 seconds down on new leader Aoyama Gakuin University by the end of the Fourth Stage. But on the 8.2 km Fifth Stage, Toyo's Hiroki Sugano ran the fastest time on his stage, 23:12, to put Toyo into 2nd. Sixth runner Naoya Kanehara moved up to within 5 seconds of AGU on his 9.9 km stage, leaving it to anchor Shu Yoshida to run them down and open a 31-second lead for the win. Yoshida was all smiles as he broke the tape at the end of his 10.1 km stage. AGU ended up 2nd in 3:17:25. Chuo's B-team took 3rd in 3:17:50, beating Juntendo University ...

Nanaka Yonezawa showed incredible growth during her three years at Miyagi's Sendai Ikuei H.S. , and with her graduation she's now poised to go to the next level. Her first and third years at Sendai Ikuei its girls' team won the National High School Ekiden, she was 2nd in the National Track and Field Championships 1500 m in 2020, and she was the top-placing Japanese athlete in the 1500 m and 3000 m at last year's National High School Track and Field Championships. All that is more than enough to cement her place as the leader of her generation. In April Yonezawa will enter national champion Meijo University , but before she goes she talked about her memories of her three years of high school and her ambitions for the future. Originally from Shizuoka, Yonezawa travelled over 500 km to attend Sendai Ikuei. There she focused on the 1500 m and 3000 m, setting bests of 4:14.74 and 8:59.97, as well as a 5000 m best of 15:31.33. All three times put her in Japan's all-time...

Both the Sendai Ikuei H.S.  girls and the defending champ  Sera H.S.  boys led start-to-finish to win today's National High School Ekiden , Sendai Ikuei becoming the first team in the 33-year history of the girls' event to win the national title five times, and Sera extending its record as the only team in the boys' race's 72 years with double-digit wins to eleven. Cold and windy conditions with off and on snow meant no new stage records, but in both races there were  still fast times. 3rd last year, Sendai Ikuei put its three strongest runners first, leaving the last two stages to debuting first-years. Opening runner Nanaka Yonezawa  ran 19:15 for her 6.0 km stage to put Sendai Ikuei 30 seconds out front. Second runner Kokone Sugimori added 26 seconds to that, running 12:41 for 4.0975 km, with third runner Natsumi Yamanaka  putting in another 19 seconds with a 9:53 stage best on her 3.0 km leg. First-year Kurea Watanabe  added 1 last second on the 3....

At Sunday's National High School Ekiden  in Kyoto, Hiroshima's Sera H.S.  boys will be aiming for their tenth victory in fifty appearances. In their last win five years ago, the Sera boys set the current course record of 2:01:18 for 42.195 km in seven stages. With a 5000 m average time that makes it the fastest Sera team in history, can Sera mark its 50th National High School Ekiden with a milestone achievement? 3rd-year captain Konosuke Shintani and 2nd-years Cosmas Mwangi , Shota Morishita and Shota Shiode have all broken 14 minutes for 5000 m, the benchmark for a top national-level high school time . The average 5000 m PB of its seven fastest runners, 14:01.64, is the best in its fifty appearances to date. "The entire team has raised its level," commented head coach Shoji Shintaku . "There is no weak link. All they need is strength to go with their speed." But Sera's main rivals are just as strong. Defending champion Sendai Ikuei H.S.  of Miyagi r...

Since July 23 official track time trials have returned to Miyagi prefecture. Despite this summer's National High School Championships having been canceled local high school athletes have been training hard, and the work they put in has paid off with good results. On July 25 the 41st Sendai Long Distance Time Trials meet took place at Athlete Park Sendai Field in Sendai's Miyagino Ward. Sendai Ikuei H.S. 2nd-year Nanako Yonezawa 16, produced the biggest result of the day in the women's 1500 m. Last season as a first-year she won the Second Stage at the National High School Ekiden Championships, contributing to Sendai Ikuei's team victory. In the 1500 m she led from the early stages of the race, kicking off the last corner to take the win. Her time of 4:18.52 was a PB that broke the 25-year-old Miyagi prefecture high school record. It was also the fastest U18 time in the world this year and second-fastest U20 time by just 0.22. "My goal was to hit the Nationa...

16-year-old Samuel Wanjiru vs. 15-year-old Mekubo Mogusu on the First Stage of the 2002 National High School Boys Ekiden in their first year in Japan. One of the great races to ever grace Japanese TV, before the big ekidens got together and banned non-Japanese runners from running first.   This race was one of the reasons everyone in Japan knew what was coming with Wanjiru years before he went off to Europe for the first time. Wanjiru and Mogusu came to Japan one day apart and were great rivals for the next three years. Mogusu went on to become the best collegiate runner in Japanese history, running three sub-hour half marathons his junior year at Yamanashi Gakuin University and breaking course records everywhere. Wanjiru went straight to the corporate leagues and on to marathon legend. JRN interviewed Tsutomu Akiyama , who helped bring both of them to Japan, back in 2010 .

Future Olympian Julius Gitahi of Sendai Ikuei H.S. sets the still-standing course record of 27:48 for the 10.0 km First Stage at the 1995 National High School Ekiden. Because of great performances like this, most major ekidens later banned non-Japanese runners from their opening stages.

Track season has been edging toward starting back up in Japan, but since March in the absence of formal races many of the top university and corporate teams have been holding intramural time trials, some done up to World Athletics standards, others more informal hand-timed events. More than any other name, the one that's come to the surface through these time trials is Chuo University first-year Yamato Yoshii . In March Yoshii graduated from Sendai Ikuei H.S. , alma mater of 2008 Beijing Olympics marathon gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru among others. At Sendai Ikuei he wasn't a brilliant ekiden runner, his best performance a 2nd-place finish his first year on the 3.0 km Second Stage at the National High School Ekiden Championships that helped Sendai Ikuei finish 3rd overall. He followed that up with a disastrous 42nd place finish out of 47 on the prestigious 10 km First Stage the next year, then wrapped his high school ekiden career with an 8th-place finish on the 8.1075 km T...

Future Beijing Olympics marathon gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru runs a still-standing Third Stage course record to lead Sendai Ikuei H.S. to the National High School Boys Ekiden Championships title. The team's winning time, a course record at the time, is still the second-fastest ever.

Sendai Ikuei H.S. and Nagano Higashi H.S. go after defending champ Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. at the 2017 National High School Girls Ekiden Championships.