Two big events happen this weekend in western Japan. Saturday in Fukuoka are the National Cross-Country Championships . The list of withdrawals is pretty long, but the four races on the schedule are still set to pull in good talent, especially in the senior races where wins can score people without the qualifying standard places in the National Track and Field Championships 10000 m. Click the race distance for entry lists: Senior Men's 10 km , Senior Women's 8 km , U20 men's 8 km , U20 women's 6 km . TBS will be broadcasting the senior races on delay starting at 3:30 p.m. Japan time. Sunday is the final edition of the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon before it moves back to Osaka next year. The entry list is super deep, with 25 men who've run under 2:10 in the last 3 years and 53 sub-2:12, and at this point the only major withdrawal looks to be Olympic marathon trials winner Shogo Nakamura . Expect Lake Biwa to go out with a bang. NHK will broadcast the entire race
For half a century, the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon has been held along the shores of Lake Biwa in Otsu, Shiga. Locals have long given it their full support, turning out as volunteers and to cheer. We talked to them about their memories of the historic race ahead of its final running before moving back to its original home in Osaka. Kikuji Kawamura , 85, a former Otsu municipal employee who has been a part of the race's operational team for decades, is known locally as a living encyclopedia of every aspect of the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon. In 1965, the year after the Tokyo Olympics, a friend asked him to help accurately measure the course's 42.195 km distance. The winner that year for the second time was two-time Olympic marathon gold medalist and famed barefoot runner Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia. Kawamura has vivid recollections of talking to Bikila there. "Before the race Abebe was warming up in the stadium and I noticed how skinny his legs were," Kawamura says. &q