Skip to main content

Kashiwabara Sets Stage Record as Team Honda Wins 64th Towada Hachimantai Ekiden

by Brett Larner

A midsummer tuneup for corporate, university and amateur teams training in northern Japan to escape the heat and humidity, the Towada Hachimantai Ekiden saw its 64th running on Aug. 7.  Team Honda, led by 2010 Tokyo Marathon winner Masakazu Fujiwara, took the team title as it covered the five stage, 73.8 km course in 3:48:38.

Honda started the race in 3rd and gradually worked its way to within 21 seconds of the lead by the end of Fujiwara's stage second-best run on the 16. 3 km Third Stage.  Fourth Stage runner Minoru Ikebe ran a stage best time to overtake leader Nihon University for 1st.  Honda anchor Takashi Toyoda was only sixth-fastest on the brutal uphill Fifth Stage but still held on for the win after Nihon's anchor Shingo Hayashi struggled and finished 12th on stage time.

Hayashi in turn barely held off Toyo University's brilliant uphill specialist Ryuji Kashiwabara, who took Toyo from 8th to 3rd and from nearly five minutes off the lead to less than two with a stage record 49:01.  It was senior Kashiwabara's best run this year after months of injury followed by the stress of his hometown of Iwaki, Fukushima being badly affected by March's disasters.  His result bodes well for Toyo in the upcoming fall ekiden season leading to his final run at the Hakone Ekiden in January.

64th Towada Hachimantai Ekiden - Top Results
Kazuno, Akita, 8/7/11
click here for complete results
Stage Best Results
First Stage (13.6 km) - Yusuke Sato (Nihon Univ. A) - 41:04
Second Stage (12.4 km) - Naohiro Domoto (Nihon Univ. A) - 37:39
Third Stage (16.3 km) - Josephat Ndambiri (Kenya/Team Komori Corp.) - 47:19
Fourth Stage (16.4 km) - Minoru Ikebe (Team Honda) - 49:44
Fifth Stage (14. 1 km uphill) - Ryuji Kashiwabara (Toyo Univ. A) - 49:01 - CR

Top Team Results - Five Stages, 73.8 km
1. Team Honda - 3:48:38
2. Nihon Univ. A - 3:50:09
3. Toyo Univ. A - 3:50:28
4. Team Yachiyo Kogyo - 3:50:32
5. Team Komori Corp. - 3:51:38
6. Team JR Higashi Nihon - 3:52:06
7. Tamagawa AC - 3:52:10
8. Team Nissin Shokuhin - 3:52:38
9. Kokushikan Univ. A - 3:57:06
10. Team Press Kogyo - 3:57:43

(c) 2011 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more