Skip to main content

Rock and Roll Half Marathon - Results

by Brett Larner

Six Japanese runners competed in the elite field of the 2008 Virginia Beach Rock and Roll Half Marathon on Aug. 31. Each year the 5th and 6th place male and female Japanese finishers in March's All-Japan Jitsugyodan Half Marathon Championships are invited to run the Rock and Roll Half Marathon, the higher-tier Japanese finishers being selected for other races including the World Half Marathon Championships. This year the invited men were Team Konica Minolta's Kazuyuki Maeda, 7th overall at the 2008 Jitsugyodan Half in 1:02:50, and Team Asahi Kasei's Takaaki Koda, 8th at the Jitsugyodan Half in 1:02:52. The invited women were Team Tenmaya's Kei Terada, 7th overall at the Jitsugyodan Half with a 1:12:11, and Team Sysmex's Megumi Seike, 9th at the Jitsugyodan Half in 1:12:25. Two other Japanese women, Team Shimamura's Aya Manome and Team Wacoal's Miho Notagashira, also ran the Rock and Roll Half Marathon.

Maeda ran 1:05:18 to take 4th in the men's race behind Kenyan winner James Kwambai, who clocked 1:02:11. Ethiopian Tadesse Tola and Kenyan McDonald Ondara were 2nd and 3rd in 1:02:33 and 1:04:45 respectively. Koda had a weaker showing, finishing 9th in 1:06:47.

The Japanese women were led by Seike's 3rd place 1:13:05, just outkicked by Katie McGregor who finished in 1:13:04 as runner-up behind winner Edith Masai. Masai ran 1:12:54 for the win. Manome was 7th in 1:15:08, and Notagashira also managed to squeeze into the top 10, finishing 9th in 1:15:08. Terada had an off day, 11th in 1:18:33.

For complete results click here.

Note: I missed these results at the time they happened last week.

(c) 2008 Brett Larner
all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Morii Surprises With Second-Ever Japanese Sub-2:10 at Boston

With three sub-2:09 Japanese men in the race and good weather conditions by Boston standards the chances were decent that somebody was going to follow 1981 winner Toshihiko Seko 's 2:09:26 and score a sub-2:10 at the Boston Marathon . But nobody thought it was going to be by a 2:14 amateur. Paris Olympic team member Suguru Osako had taken 3rd in Boston in 2:10:28 in his debut seven years ago, and both he and 2:08 runners Kento Otsu and Ryoma Takeuchi were aiming for spots in the top 10, Otsu after having run a 1:01:43 half marathon PB in February and Takeuchi of a 2:08:40 marathon PB at Hofu last December. A high-level amateur with a 2:14:15 PB who scored a trip to Boston after winning a local race in Japan, Yuma Morii told JRN minutes before the start of the race, "I'm not thinking about time at all. I'm going to make top 10, whatever time it takes." Running Boston for the first time Morii took off with a 4:32 on the downhill opening mile, but after that  Sis
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ivy League at the Izumo Ekiden in Review

Last week I was contacted by Will Geiken , who I'd met years ago when he was a part of the Ivy League Select Team at the Izumo Ekiden . He was looking for historical results from Izumo and lists of past team members, and I was able to put together a pretty much complete history, only missing the alternates from 1998 to 2010 and a little shaky on the reverse transliterations of some of the names from katakana back into the Western alphabet for the same years. Feel free to send corrections or additions to alternate lists. It's interesting to go back and see some names that went on to be familiar, to see the people who made an impact like Princeton's Paul Morrison , Cornell's Max King , Stanford's Brendan Gregg in one of the years the team opened up beyond the Ivy League, Cornell's Ben de Haan , Princeton's Matt McDonald , and Harvard's Hugo Milner last year, and some of the people who struggled with the format. 1998 Team: 15th of 21 overall, 2:14:10 (43
Post a Comment
Read more

Hirabayashi Runs PB at Shanghai Half, WR Holder Nakata Dominates Fuji Five Lakes - Weekend Road Roundup

Returning to the roads after his 2:06:18 win at February's Osaka Marathon, Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Koku Gakuin University) took 5th at Sunday's Shanghai Half Marathon in a PB 1:01:23, just under a minute behind winner Roncer Kipkorir Konga (Kenya) who clocked a CR 1:00:29. After inexplicably running the equivalent of a sub-59 half marathon to win the Hakone Ekiden's Third Stage, Aoi Ota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) was back to running performances consistent with his other PBs with a 1:02:30 for 8th. His AGU teammate Kyosuke Hiramatsu was 10th in 1:04:00. Women's winner Magdalena Shauri (Tanzania) also set a new CR in 1:09:57. Aoyama Gakuin runners took the top four spots in the men's half marathon at the Aomori Sakura Marathon , with Hakone alternate Kosei Shiraishi getting the win in 1:04:32 and B-team members Shunto Hamakawa and Kei Kitamura 2nd and 3rd in 1:04:45 and 1:04:48. Club runners took the other division titles, Hina Shinozaki winning the women's half
Post a Comment
Read more