Skip to main content

Will Wanjiru's Record Fall? Watch the National High School Ekiden Championships Live

The 2011 National High School Ekiden Championships take place Dec. 25 in Kyoto.  Both the girls' and boys' races will be broadcast live and commercial-free on NHK.  Overseas viewers should be able to watch live online via Keyhole TV using the password, which should be the same as the name of the broadcasting network.  The girls' race will be broadcast from 10:05 to 11:54 a.m. Japan time, with boys' race taking place from 12:15 to 2:52 p.m.

My apologies for the lack of a full preview article, but getting all the material for the Japan in Wanjiru series together this week has really taken a lot out of me.  If for no other reason, this year's Nationals are worth watching because Kenyan Charles Ndirangu of Sera H.S. has an excellent chance of breaking Samuel Wanjiru's record on the Third Stage if the weather holds.  Ndirangu missed Wanjiru's historic 2004 mark by one second last year and since then has set the Japanese high school 5000 m record.  Tune in to see if it happens.  If I have the energy I will do live commentary via Twitter @JRNLive.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays.

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

Nat'l University Ekiden Updates Here

Looks like I just went over my update limit on Twitter - sorry, it's the first time I've tried to use it for this. I'll look for another option next time. In the meantime I'll add updates to the comments below. Not sure if that has a max too but I guess we'll find out. Update: Part one of the Nationals commentary can be found here .

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...