Skip to main content

Wakamatsu Wins Final Himejijo 10-Miler

by Brett Larner

Yoshihiro Wakamatsu (Team Nissin Shokuhin), a graduate of Hakone Ekiden course record holder Toyo University, won the final running of the historic Himejijo Road Race men's 10 miler on Feb. 11. Throwing in a surge at 7 km he easily broke away from the field, which included London Olympics marathoner Ryo Yamamoto (Team SGH Group Sagawa), two-time Himejijo winner Kazuyoshi Tokumoto (Team Monteroza), and Norihisa Imai of Toyo's 2014 Hakone-winning squad, to open a gap of 30 seconds and claim the win unchallenged in 47:38. Tsukasa Morita (Team Sanyo Tokushu Seiko) was a solo 2nd in 48:08, his teammate Jun Shinoto, the 2006 national champion in the 3000 m steeplechase, winning a tight pack race for 3rd in 48:21.

In the women's 5 km, Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. went 1-2 with Tomoka Iwai winning in 16:24 over Tomoka Katada in 16:28.

The Himejijo Road Race is set to be transformed into a mass-participation marathon after 54 years as an elite event.  Look for the new race, the Himeji Castle World Heritage Site Marathon, to open in 2015.  Click here for more background on the format change.

 54th Himejijo Road Race
Himeji, Hyogo, 2/11/14
complete results coming shortly

 Men's 10 Miles
1. Yoshihiro Wakamatsu (Team Nissin Shokuhin) - 47:38
2. Tsukasa Morita (Team Sanyo Tokushu Seiko) - 48:08
3. Jun Shinoto (Team Sanyo Tokushu Seiko) - 48:21
4. Kazuyoshi Tokumoto (Team Monteroza) - 48:24
5. Ryo Yamamoto (Team SGH Group Sagawa) - 48:26
6. Yushi Nowaki (Team Toyota Boshoku) - 48:26
7. Norihisa Imai (Toyo Univ.) - 48:27
8. Naoto Yoshimura (Ritsumeikan Univ.) - 48:27
9. Hiromasa Kumahashi (Team Sanyo Tokushu Seiko) - 48:30
10. Kazuki Muramoto (Hyogo Prefectural Univ.) - 48:34

Women's 5 km
1. Tomoka Iwai (Ritsumeikan Uji H.S.) - 16:24
2. Tomoka Katada (Ritsumeikan Uji H.S.) - 16:28
3. Mami Onuki (Hyogo Univ.) - 16:44

(c) 2014 Brett Larner
all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Heisei Mountaineering Stops Takigahara SDF Base From Scoring 10-Year Streak at Mount Fuji Ekiden

by Koichi Iwasa of DogsorCaravan On Aug. 2 the 51st Mount Fuji Ekiden took place, starting and finishing in Gotemba, Shizuoka and covering 11 stages up to the peak of Mount Fuji and back down. Teams of 6 runners tackle the tough course, each running handling one uphill and one downhill leg with the 6th runner reaching the peak before turning around to head back to the exchange zone where they started. The Heisei Mountaineering Club team took the overall win in 3:50:39, beating 9-time winner Takigahara SDF Base by 2:07 and stopping them from achieving a 10-year victory streak. The independent team division and SDF team division were separated in 2005, and this was the first time that the winning independent team outran the fastest SDF team to take the overall title. The roster that Heisei Mountaineering put together for this year's race raised eyebrows among everyone familiar with the Japanese trail running scene. Handling the 5th and 7th legs was Ruy Ueda , winner of the Fuji M...
Post a Comment
Read more

Komazawa University One Step Away From Perfect Season With Hakone Ekiden Day One Win

Already the course record-breaker at the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden this season, 2021 Hakone Ekiden champion Komazawa University came one step away from its first-ever triple crown of single-season ekiden wins as it won a highly competitive 2023 Hakone Ekiden Day One over defending champ Aoyama Gakuin University and last year's 6th placer Chuo University . Things got off to an unexpected start when Select Team runner Hayate Nitta of non-qualifier Ikuei University decided to take his one and only Hakone shot and run it up to his ability on the 21.3 km 1st leg even though the rest of the field opted to jog. At one point Nitta had a lead of almost a minute and a half, but as beautiful as it would have been for him to pull it off, Meiji University 's Shunpei Tomita and Komazawa's Kensuke Tsubura still managed to run him down in the final kilometer. Tomita took the stage win in 1:02:44, 1:02:08 half marathon pace vs. his 1:02:10 PB despite the slow s...
4 comments
Read more

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...
54 comments
Read more