japan running news

The rain mostly stopped exactly 10 minutes before the start of the Osaka Marathon , and conditions were actually pretty good for most of what ended up a record-breaking race. Backing off from the organizers planned 3:19/km when the main invited elites told them nobody wanted to go that fast in cold and rain, the women's race was a pack run until the late stages with a group of 7 or 8 stretched out over 5 seconds hitting half in 1:11:38. Shedding one or two at a time as the kilometers went by from there, by 40 km it was down to Ethiopians Waganesh Nekasha and Beyenu Degefa in 2:17:08 with Australian veteran Lisa Weightman 6 seconds back and last year's CR breaker Helen Tola Bekele another 5 seconds behind. Nekasha had the stronger kick and scored the win in 2:24:20, Degefa losing 17 seconds to finish 2nd in 2:24:37 and both just over a minute of their bests. Weightman followed up her 2:24:18 in Valencia in December with a 2:24:43 for 3rd to solidify her claim to a spot on wh...

The Inuyama Half Marathon and National Cross Country Championships are happening Sunday, with Japan's team for March's Belgrade World Cross Country Championships to be mostly drawn from top placers in the different divisions at Nationals. It's being streamed above starting at 10:20 local time, with fields including Takuya Hanyu , Ryuto Igawa , Hazuma Hattori , Yuta Bando , Tomonori Yamaguchi and Masato Imai in the senior men's 10 km, Momoka Kawaguchi , Nana Kuraoka and Chika Kosakai in the senior women's 8 km, Sota Orita , Ryuto Kawahara , Tetsu Sasaki , Shunsuke Kuwata and Soma Nagahara in the junior men's 8 km, and Narumi Okumoto and Nodoka Ashida in the junior women's 6 km. But the main race Sunday is the Osaka Marathon . One of the world's biggest mass-participation marathons, Osaka has deep elite fields especially on the men's side. That's not surprising since for Japanese men it's one of the designated races where they have a...

Four of last year's top five women will be back at the Osaka Marathon , with 2023 winner and CR breaker Helen Tola Bekele returning to face runner-up Beyenu Degefa , Lisa Weightman , and new additions Fancy Chemutai , 2:18:11 in Valencia 2022, and Viola Jelgata Kibiwot , 2:22:57 in Frankfurt last fall. Misaki Ichida was the 2nd Japanese woman last year in 2:25:51 for 5th, and she's the top-ranked domestic name this year at 8th in the field. You wouldn't know Osaka is the third of four big men's marathons in Japan in the course of four months, as 49 sub-2:10 men are entered. It's a completely different field from last year, with the top returning runner being Shohei Otsuka , 8th last year in 2:06:57. Japanese men have to run 2:05:50 to have a chance of taking the third Olympic team spot away from Suguru Osako , and top three-ranked Stephen Kissa , Adeladlew Mamo and Yihunilign Adane are all positioned from 2:04:48 to 2:05:53 to help enable that. Realistically, ev...