by Brett Larner click here for Day One report Kenji Nakashima anchors Waseda to Hakone Ekiden CR win. Click photo to enlarge. They were the two best university teams ever assembled and they ran like it. After two-time defending Hakone Ekiden champion Toyo University and 2010 National University Ekiden champion Waseda University both broke the Day One Hakone course record, Waseda hammered Toyo on the first two stages of Day Two to retake the lead and then held on to take the overall win in a course-record 10:59:50, the first school to ever break 11 hours on the celebrated 10-stage, 217.9 km course. Toyo nearly ran Waseda down on the final stage, finishing 22 seconds back in the closest margin of victory in Hakone's 87 year history and likewise breaking the course record by over 3 minutes. It was a classic duel between the elite Waseda, symbolic of the privilege, connections and money at the top of Japanese society, and the underdog Toyo, a minor school with a young coach wi...
the world's window into elite japanese distance running, since 2007