Skip to main content

JRN Turns 1000

Japan Running News is now 1000 posts old. Thank you to all the athletes, coaches, agents, race officials, media colleagues and others who have contributed over the last nearly two years, and special thanks to associate editor Mika Tokairin. And very special thanks of course to our readers regular and otherwise.

I've taken this occasion to add a new 'Best of JRN' section to the 'Blog Resources' menu. In this section you'll find links to JRN's most-read articles, those which have prompted readers to contact me directly with comments, and some of our personal favorites. The best of section is still under construction but should be finished by the end of the week. Click here to go straight to it.

In the last year JRN has had opportunities to go beyond just translating and reporting; special recognition in this department goes out to Gavin Doyle of time-to-run.com for creating the chance for a double Japanese victory at May's Copenhagen Marathon. Along with more of this we're still looking at adding some new features including a regular series of in-depth interviews along the lines of the one with 2:08 marathoner Takayuki Nishida we published in July. Feel free to contact us with requests or suggestions for content you'd like to see, and if you are a regular reader or appreciate the work we do please also feel free to support JRN with a donation. Any amount is welcome, just click here.

Thanks again,

Brett Larner
Japan Running News

Comments

cpr said…
I think I found your blog at about post no. 750 and I am looking forward to read many more!
Anonymous said…
おめでとう!!!

Joe

Most-Read This Week

Heisei Mountaineering Stops Takigahara SDF Base From Scoring 10-Year Streak at Mount Fuji Ekiden

by Koichi Iwasa of DogsorCaravan On Aug. 2 the 51st Mount Fuji Ekiden took place, starting and finishing in Gotemba, Shizuoka and covering 11 stages up to the peak of Mount Fuji and back down. Teams of 6 runners tackle the tough course, each running handling one uphill and one downhill leg with the 6th runner reaching the peak before turning around to head back to the exchange zone where they started. The Heisei Mountaineering Club team took the overall win in 3:50:39, beating 9-time winner Takigahara SDF Base by 2:07 and stopping them from achieving a 10-year victory streak. The independent team division and SDF team division were separated in 2005, and this was the first time that the winning independent team outran the fastest SDF team to take the overall title. The roster that Heisei Mountaineering put together for this year's race raised eyebrows among everyone familiar with the Japanese trail running scene. Handling the 5th and 7th legs was Ruy Ueda , winner of the Fuji M...

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

Komazawa University One Step Away From Perfect Season With Hakone Ekiden Day One Win

Already the course record-breaker at the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden this season, 2021 Hakone Ekiden champion Komazawa University came one step away from its first-ever triple crown of single-season ekiden wins as it won a highly competitive 2023 Hakone Ekiden Day One over defending champ Aoyama Gakuin University and last year's 6th placer Chuo University . Things got off to an unexpected start when Select Team runner Hayate Nitta of non-qualifier Ikuei University decided to take his one and only Hakone shot and run it up to his ability on the 21.3 km 1st leg even though the rest of the field opted to jog. At one point Nitta had a lead of almost a minute and a half, but as beautiful as it would have been for him to pull it off, Meiji University 's Shunpei Tomita and Komazawa's Kensuke Tsubura still managed to run him down in the final kilometer. Tomita took the stage win in 1:02:44, 1:02:08 half marathon pace vs. his 1:02:10 PB despite the slow s...