Skip to main content

The Tasks Ahead for Noguchi to Reach London

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/news/f-sp-tp0-20081024-422297.html

translated by Brett Larner

Athens Olympics women's marathon champion Mizuki Noguchi (Team Sysmex), who withdrew from the Beijing Olympics after sustaining an injury to her left thigh, plans to make the 2012 London Olympics the main goal over the next few years. In four years she will be 34. "Age doesn't matter," Noguchi believes. "I have to tell my coaches about my condition more often and control myself better from now on." Noguchi will listen more carefully to what her body is telling her in order to catch potential injuries and an early stage.

38 year old Constantina Tomescu-Dita (Romania) won the Beijing Olympic Marathon. Looking at keeping her motivation as time goes on, Noguchi says, "The more I run the marathon the more interesting it becomes." Her 150 cm-tall body has always looked full of power when she runs, the kind of power which won her the gold medal in Athens. After Athens she continued to develop herself, working on improving her form, raising her running to an entirely new level.

Noguchi's coach Nobuyuki Fujita believes, "Wisdom gained from life's experiences is without question important as you advance in years. This is essential for reducing the time lost to injury and fatigue." The tiny Noguchi does "The hardest training of anyone in the world," says Coach Fujita. For Noguchi to remain competitive at the world level they want to maintain her training load, but Fujita admits that along with discipline and "The willingness to do what is necessary to train over a long span of time," Noguchi's team must find a way to include more rest in her schedule.

Thus far in Noguchi's recovery she has only been able to jog. Her next marathon will likely not be until next fall. To build up her confidence on the way to London Noguchi will run her next marathon as a high-speed race. This plan is already in place, but, Noguchi says, along the way, "I want to set new personal best marks on the track and in the half marathon, even by one second, to make sure I'm not losing my speed." As she returns to her throne, the queen of Japanese distance running looks to strengthen both body and mind.

Comments

Most-Read This Week

On the Loss of the ARRS Database

At some point in the last few months I discovered that both versions of the ARRS database, the static one and the searchable version , are gone. Last week David Monti posted a link to the ARRS history of an event he covered in Race Results Weekly, I guess copying and pasting a link from last year without looking at it, and that reminded me to write something about the loss of the database. The Association of Road Racing Statisticians was basically a one-man show operated from the remote Northern California shores by Ken Young . When the site existed its intro read: The Association of Road Racing Statisticians (ARRS) is an independent, non-profit organization that collects, analyses and publishes results and statistics regarding elite distance running at distances 3000m and longer...The data of ARRS is stored in the ARRS database, which has more than 1.3 million performances from more than 240,000 races by more than 95,000 elite and sub-elite distance runners worldwide...This website ...

Multiple National Records This Weekend

Olympic and World champion Haruka Kitaguchi got the biggest headlines among Japanese athletes this weekend, overcoming a rough last year and a half that included injury and a coaching change to break her own javelin throw NR by over a meter and a half to win the inaugural WA Ultimate Championship in Budapest. U20 WR and Asian AR holder Ziyi Yan opened with a big 68.05, 0.67 m further than Kitaguchi's best-ever from back in 2023. That could have been the end, but Kitaguchi came back from a 61.15 m first attempt to throw a massive 68.92 m NR on her next one, ultimately enough for the win. She still has a long way to go to match the 18-year-old Yan's 71.74 m from May, but it was a clear statement that Kitaguchi is back. Back home at the National Corporate Track and Field Championships in Kyoto, women's pole vault NR holder Misaki Morota continued a solid comeback season of her own, bettering her NR from May by 1 cm with a 4.51 m on her first attempt. Morota took another 3...