japan running news

After missing a medal by 3 seconds at August's London World Championships , defending champ Flomena Cheyech Daniel (Kenya) made it two in a row as she won a tight battle against Shitaye Habtegebrel (Bahrain) to win the Saitama International Marathon in 2:28:39. With the onus on Japanese women Reia Iwada (Dome) and Kaori Yoshida (Team RxL) to break 2:29:00 in order to qualify for Japan's new-format 2020 Olympic trials race , the pair of them did most of the heavy lifting for the first two-thirds of the race. Yoshida led the early kilometers before Iwade took over, and through strong head and tailwinds, over rolling hills and around sharp turns Iwade kept things moving just under target pace, shaking the pack down to just her, Daniel, Habtegebrel and relative unknown Bekelech Daba (Ethiopia) by 15 km. Little changed up front until after the lead group hit the start of the hilliest 10 km on the course after 25 km. For the first time Iwade slipped to the rear of the pa...

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Sunday's Saitama International Marathon leads a busy weekend of women's racing across the country. 4th in August's London World Championships marathon, last year's winner Flomena Cheyech Daniel (Kenya) returns to lead the tiny elite field of six internationals and two domestic women. Cheyech's strongest competition is Japan's Reia Iwade (Dome), the former under-20 marathon record holder who abruptly quit the Noritz corporate team earlier this year to go the solo route. Whether her new situation finds her ready to go remains to be seen. Close behind and maybe a more likely bet to stay with Daniel is Shitaye Habtegebrel (Ethiopia). Iwade, Kaori Yoshida (Team RxL) and any other Japanese women in the general elite field will have the chance to qualify for Japan's 2020 Olympic Trials race if they go under 2:29:00. Starting 30 minutes after the elite women, Saitama also features a coed mass participation field. Local poster boy Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pr...

Riding a wave of rapid improvement since the start of the season, Kanagawa University pulled off a perfect race to beat favorites Tokai University and Aoyama Gakuin University and win its first National University Men's Ekiden Championships title since 1997 in one of the fastest times in event history. Tokai beat defending national champion AGU at last month's Izumo Ekiden , and today's race was expected to be another head-to-head. But on the opening stage both were far from the front-end action. Likewise for #3-ranked Yamanashi Gakuin University, still on the mend from injuries to many of its best runners. In the absence of the three favorites, #4 through #7-ranked teams Komazawa University , Kanagawa, Waseda University and Toyo University formed a leading group from which 2015 national champion Toyo emerged as the front runner. Tokai and AGU spent the next three stages working up to the lead group before both lost ground on the Fifth Stage and had to try to r...

Returning to its regular starting point on the Promenade des Anglais this year for its tenth anniversary running, France's  Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes Nice-Cannes experienced wild winds and rain for much of the race. Running in France for the first time,  Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) hoped to become the first non-African winner in event history. Staying in the middle of a lead pack of five Kenyans and two Ethiopians, Kawauchi and the rest of the group were just off the planned sub-2:10 pace through halfway as pacer Cosmas Birech struggled to deal with winds that shifted in every direction. Daniel Yator was the first casualty of the tough conditions. At 22 km the course moved away from the open beachfront, blocking the wind enough for Birech to pick it up to the planned 3:04/km. But as he did Kawauchi found himself unable to respond, and within a kilometer he had dropped ten seconds off the lead sextet. From there it was a struggle for him to hold off Yator, ...

Qualification for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships got underway on the Nov. 3 holiday in Japan's most competitive region, East Japan, with the 58th East Japan Corporate Men's Ekiden Championships . Running without half marathon national record holder Yuta Shitara , 2015 winner Honda returned to the top with an exciting anchor stage win in 3:47:55 for the 7-stage, 77.5 km course. The Hitachi Butsuryu team's leading man Yuki Muta got them off to a good start on the opening stage, but a 1-2 punch from DeNA 's Kenta Murozuka and Bedan Karoki put DeNA 20 seconds ahead of the early leaders. 7th on the First Stage, Honda worked its way up to 3rd by the end of the Third Stage just a second behind Hitachi Butsuryu. Honda moved into 2nd on the next stage, but its gap to leader DeNA stayed steady at 21 seconds. Fujitsu passed Hitachi Butsuryu for 3rd thanks to a stage win from Ken Yokote , and a new stage record of 22:52 for the 7.8...

Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) makes his French racing debut this Sunday at the 10th Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes NIce-Cannes . Following wins at September's Oslo Marathon and October's Betsukai Pilot Marathon , Kawauchi hopes to achieve one goal that has eluded him so far in his career: joining the small group of just six Japanese men to have ever won a marathon outside Japan in a time under 2:10:00. The only other man in the field to have broken 2:10 in his career is Kenyan Alfred Kering , whose closest time to that mark in the last three years was a 2:10:27 win at the 2016 Lisbon Marathon. No others in the field have run under 2:11, but times aren't everything. The slowest man in the field on paper with a best of just 2:13:13, Daniel Yator beat Kawauchi at June's Stockholm Marathon en route to that time and will be looking to do it again. The women's field is small, with only three women who have broken 2:38 led by Ethiopian Tigist Shetu with...

Following October's season-opening Izumo Ekiden and world record-breaking Yosenkai 20 km , the university men's ekiden season continues Sunday with the National University Men's Ekiden Championships . 12 top regional teams from across the country will face off with the 15 best in the Tokyo-centric Kanto Region on an 8-stage course from Nagoya to Mie totalling 106.8 km. TV Asahi will broadcast the complete race starting at 7:00 local time on Sunday. International viewers can try  mov3.co  for streaming, with other options  to be found here . At Izumo the up-and-coming Tokai University squad took down defending champion Aoyama Gakuin University , head coach Hayashi Morozumi 's cross-country-based methodology having overtaken the innovative systematic approach of AGU's Susumu Hara that had made AGU into the dominant team of the era. AGU is likewise the defending champion at Nationals, but the longer average stage lengths at Nationals play to Tokai's streng...