Skip to main content

Eri Okubo Leaving Second Wind AC

http://swac.jp/news.shtml
http://sw-ac.jugem.jp/?eid=2656

translated by Brett Larner
photo by Dr. Helmut Winter

Our sincerest thank you to all of Second Wind AC's regular supporters.  Our club athlete Eri Okubo has decided to leave Second Wind AC at the end of March. Following her departure from Second Wind AC she plans to continue to pursue her own personal goals in a new environment.  Okubo has posted a personal statement about her decision to leave on the Second Wind AC blog.  We hope that all of you will continue to support and encourage her as she follows her dream and thank each of you for the encouragement you have given up to now.

Okubo's statement:

Thank you to everyone who has helped me and supported me. Unfortunately, I dropped out of Sunday's Nagoya Women's Marathon.  Thank you to all of my regular fans and to everyone who came out to cheer along the course.  I am truly sorry that I was not able to live up to your expectations and that I ended up with a result like this.

I would also like to tell you all that the Nagoya Women's Marathon was my last race as a Second Wind AC athlete.  I am sorry to deliver this kind of abrupt news on top of a bad race result.  Running as a Second Wind athlete enriched my range of experience as a runner, and I learned that the marathon and running itself can be truly fun.

Looking at the path ahead of me it's still a blank page, but after a night's sleep after the race on Sunday my resolve and motivation to pursue my next goal are back strong as ever. Once I fully recover and am back to a level where I can run hard I want to get back to competing in some form or another.

Three years was a short time, but I sincerely want to thank everybody who offered their encouragement whenever they saw me and who supported me right from when I was starting out and had not yet accomplished anything.

Eri Okubo

photo (c) 2012 Dr. Helmut Winter
all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

yuza said…
I am curious to know why she is leaving. Did the team ask her to leave, because she failed to meet expectations, or is she leaving because she believes she can do better without them?

I suppose it does not really matter.

Nagoya was a really good race, which had surprising depth with 15 women running under 2hrs 35mins.

Great run by Kizaki, but I am not sure how much faster she can run.

March 12, 2013 at 4:07 PM
Brett Larner said…
My impression from the tone is that this came from her side. She is the best athlete SWAC currently has so it doesn't seem likely she would be asked to leave on the basis of Nagoya.
March 13, 2013 at 7:22 AM
yuza said…
Fair enough. Perhaps she has been inspired by Kawauchi?
March 14, 2013 at 1:50 AM
Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

The Ivy League at the Izumo Ekiden in Review

Last week I was contacted by Will Geiken , who I'd met years ago when he was a part of the Ivy League Select Team at the Izumo Ekiden . He was looking for historical results from Izumo and lists of past team members, and I was able to put together a pretty much complete history, only missing the alternates from 1998 to 2010 and a little shaky on the reverse transliterations of some of the names from katakana back into the Western alphabet for the same years. Feel free to send corrections or additions to alternate lists. It's interesting to go back and see some names that went on to be familiar, to see the people who made an impact like Princeton's Paul Morrison , Cornell's Max King , Stanford's Brendan Gregg in one of the years the team opened up beyond the Ivy League, Cornell's Ben de Haan , Princeton's Matt McDonald , and Harvard's Hugo Milner last year, and some of the people who struggled with the format. 1998 Team: 15th of 21 overall, 2:14:10 (43
Post a Comment
Read more

Hirabayashi Runs PB at Shanghai Half, WR Holder Nakata Dominates Fuji Five Lakes - Weekend Road Roundup

Returning to the roads after his 2:06:18 win at February's Osaka Marathon, Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Koku Gakuin University) took 5th at Sunday's Shanghai Half Marathon in a PB 1:01:23, just under a minute behind winner Roncer Kipkorir Konga (Kenya) who clocked a CR 1:00:29. After inexplicably running the equivalent of a sub-59 half marathon to win the Hakone Ekiden's Third Stage, Aoi Ota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) was back to running performances consistent with his other PBs with a 1:02:30 for 8th. His AGU teammate Kyosuke Hiramatsu was 10th in 1:04:00. Women's winner Magdalena Shauri (Tanzania) also set a new CR in 1:09:57. Aoyama Gakuin runners took the top four spots in the men's half marathon at the Aomori Sakura Marathon , with Hakone alternate Kosei Shiraishi getting the win in 1:04:32 and B-team members Shunto Hamakawa and Kei Kitamura 2nd and 3rd in 1:04:45 and 1:04:48. Club runners took the other division titles, Hina Shinozaki winning the women's half
Post a Comment
Read more

Morii Surprises With Second-Ever Japanese Sub-2:10 at Boston

With three sub-2:09 Japanese men in the race and good weather conditions by Boston standards the chances were decent that somebody was going to follow 1981 winner Toshihiko Seko 's 2:09:26 and score a sub-2:10 at the Boston Marathon . But nobody thought it was going to be by a 2:14 amateur. Paris Olympic team member Suguru Osako had taken 3rd in Boston in 2:10:28 in his debut seven years ago, and both he and 2:08 runners Kento Otsu and Ryoma Takeuchi were aiming for spots in the top 10, Otsu after having run a 1:01:43 half marathon PB in February and Takeuchi of a 2:08:40 marathon PB at Hofu last December. A high-level amateur with a 2:14:15 PB who scored a trip to Boston after winning a local race in Japan, Yuma Morii told JRN minutes before the start of the race, "I'm not thinking about time at all. I'm going to make top 10, whatever time it takes." Running Boston for the first time Morii took off with a 4:32 on the downhill opening mile, but after that  Sis
Post a Comment
Read more