Honda Kicks Off Season With Win at 66th Towada Hachimantai Ekiden

by Brett Larner

Ekiden season got off to an early start with the 66th running of Akita's Towada Hachimantai Ekiden on Aug. 7. The Honda corporate team, less Moscow World Championships marathoner Masakazu Fujiwara and other A-list members, outran rival Yakult for the win after a slow start. The Yakult A team led for the first three of the day's five stages thanks in part to a superb stage record of 36:12 on the 13.4 km Second Stage by new Kenyan ace Bernard Kimani, while Honda fell as low as 4th. On the 16.4 km Fourth Stage new Honda recruit Wataru Ueno, a graduate of Komazawa University and Sendai Ikuei H.S., had a strong corporate ekiden debut as he made up the 30-second gap to leader Yutaro Fukushi of Yakult before opening a lead of nearly two minutes.

With Fukushi having fallen to 3rd behind Komori Corporation, Yakult anchor Soji Ikeda, another Komazawa alum, did his best to run down Honda's Hayato Saito on the tough uphill Fifth Stage, but although he overtook Komori's Tatsunori Hamasaki and closed the gap to Saito to 1:30, Saito was just too far away. Honda covered the 73.7 km course in 3:48:03 for the win. Yakult A was next in 3:49:33, Ikeda holding off Hamasaki in the final stretch. With a Third Stage win by marathoner Keita Akaba, Komori Corporation was 3rd in 3:49:35.

66th Towada Hachimantai Ekiden Top Results
Kazuno, Akita, 8/7/13
5 stages, 73.7 km, 32 teams
click here for complete results

Top Team Results - 73.7 km
1. Honda - 3:48:03
2. Yakult A - 3:49:33
3. Komori Corporation - 3:49:35
4. Fujitsu - 3:50:46
5. JR Higashi Nihon - 3:51:35

Individual Results

First Stage - 13. 6 km
1. Yuki Takamiya (Yakult A) - 40:57
2. Yusuke Sato (Fujitsu) - 41:04
3. Takehiro Yamanaka (Honda) - 41:05
4. Kiyokatsu Hasegawa (JR Higashi Nihon) - 41:15
5. Yasuhito Ikeda (NTT Nishi Nippon) - 41:27

Second Stage - 13. 4 km
1. Bernard Kimani (Kenya/Yakult A) - 36:12 - CR
2. David Njuguna (Kenya/Yakult B) - 37:25
3. Takuya Yokoyama (JR Higashi Nihon) - 38:27
4. Kenta Kitazawa (Yachiyo Kogyo) - 38:43
5. Shogo Matsugaki (NTT Nishi Nippon) - 38:47

Third Stage - 16.2 km
1. William Malel (Kenya/Honda) - 46:31
2. Joseph Onsarigo (Kenya/Nanyu City Hall) - 47:10
3. Kazuyoshi Shimozato (Komori Corp.) - 47:31
4. Kassa Mekashaw (Ethiopia/Yachiyo Kogyo) - 48:23
5. Tomohito Takenaka (NTT Nishi Nippon) - 48:33

Fourth Stage - 16.4 km
1. Keita Akiba (Komori Corp.) - 50:04
2. Kazuhiro Kuga (Fujitsu) - 50:35
3. Wataru Ueno (Honda) - 50:44
4. Masahiro Kawaguchi (Yakult B) - 51:00
5. Makoto Harada (JR Higashi Nihon) - 51:25

Fifth Stage - 14.1 km, significant uphill
1. Soji Ikeda (Yakult A) - 50:28
2. Hayato Saito (Honda) - 50:44
3. Tatsunori Hamasaki (Komori Corp.) - 50:53
4. Norimasa Nishina (Fujitsu) - 51:26
5. Yasuaki Kojima (East Japan Corp. Select Team) - 51:37

(c) 2013 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

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...

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...

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...

japan running news

Search This Blog