by Brett Larner
This week's 88th Hakone Ekiden, the Kanto region university men's ekiden championship, was a watershed event, with winner Toyo University taking over eight minutes off the record for the ten stage, 217.9 km event to become the first school to break an average 3:00/km pace for the entire race. How do Toyo and the other top-placing schools at this year's Hakone Ekiden compare to the best in the world's other leading university men's distance program, the United States' NCAA Division I?
In the NCAA students usually focus on distances up to 5000 m through the winter indoor track season, up to 10000 m in the spring outdoor track season, and then up to 10 km cross-country in the fall. With no indoor track season in Japan, after the New Year in Kanto students usually focus on training for a March half-marathon or the 10 km and 12 km selection races for Japan's World Cross-Country teams, then anything from 1500 m up to a half-marathon through the …
This week's 88th Hakone Ekiden, the Kanto region university men's ekiden championship, was a watershed event, with winner Toyo University taking over eight minutes off the record for the ten stage, 217.9 km event to become the first school to break an average 3:00/km pace for the entire race. How do Toyo and the other top-placing schools at this year's Hakone Ekiden compare to the best in the world's other leading university men's distance program, the United States' NCAA Division I?
In the NCAA students usually focus on distances up to 5000 m through the winter indoor track season, up to 10000 m in the spring outdoor track season, and then up to 10 km cross-country in the fall. With no indoor track season in Japan, after the New Year in Kanto students usually focus on training for a March half-marathon or the 10 km and 12 km selection races for Japan's World Cross-Country teams, then anything from 1500 m up to a half-marathon through the …