Skip to main content

Weekend Track Roundup - Miyawaki Becomes Tenth Japanese Man to Clear 10000 m Olympic Standard

by Brett Larner

Another weekend, another round of massive track time trials.  The Shizuoka Long-Distance Time Trials meet, always the site of the fastest 10000 m of the fall season, had a tight race up front as Edward Waweru (Kenya/Team NTN) outkicked John Thuo (Kenya/Team Toyota) for the win, 27:23.82 to 27:24.41.  Patrick Muwaka (Kenya/Team Aisan Kogyo) also cleared the 27:45 Olympic A-standard, 3rd in 27:33.14.

A large selection of top young Japanese talent ran the same heat to shoot for the A-standard, but the only new athlete to achieve an Olympic mark was 20-year-old Chihiro Miyawaki (Team Toyota) who ran a PB of 28:01.00, the tenth Japanese man this year to clear the London A- or B-standard.  Only five days after a disastrous university debut at the Izumo Ekiden where he was 13th on his stage, 18-year old Komazawa University first-year Kenta Murayama was the second Japanese finisher, outkicking pro Takuya Fukatsu (Team Asahi Kasei) and Tokai University ace Akinobu Murasawa and running a PB of 28:17.57.  Kenyan Jeremiah Karemi (Toyokawa H.S.) won the men's 5000 m A-heat in 13:55.86, 14 seconds over Saku Chosei H.S. ace Shun Morozumi.  Karemi's time beat that of rival Titus Waroru (Kenya/Chinzai H.S.), who ran 14:02.12 for the win at the Kumamoto Prefecture Long Distance Time Trials Meet the same day.

The women's talent in Shizuoka was split between 3000 m and 5000 m.  Karemi's teammate Beatrice Wainaina Mururgi (Toyokawa H.S.) soloed a 9:02.35 win in the 3000 m A-heat, with 2nd-place pro Riko Matsuzaki (Team Sekisui Kagaku) over 8 seconds behind.  Matsuzaki's teammates Yuko Shimizu and Misaki Onishi (Team Sekisui Kagaku) had the fastest runs in the 5000 m, 15:46.05 and 15:46.22.  Daegu World Championships marathoner Mai Ito was the only other woman to break 16, 3rd in 15:56.14.  Across the country two other women also broke 16.  Kenyan ace Sally Chepyego (Team Kyudenko) ran a solid 15:28.83 to win the Nagasaki Nighter Time Trials meet, while Ayuko Suzuki (Nagoya Univ.) set a meet record 15:50.74 at the Tokai Region Fall University Championships meet.

(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