Toyota and Tanaka Drop New Course Records

Toyota and Tanaka Drop New Course Records - Ekiden Weekend Roundup

Qualifying action for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships continued Sunday with the combined Chubu and Hokuriku regional ekidens. Running both an A and a B team with only the A team having a chance of going on to race on New Year's Day, Toyota destroyed the field as it took 1st and 3rd overall.

After a slow start the A-team's Chihiro Miyawaki broke the course record on the 11.5 km Third Stage, covering it in 32:55 to move into the lead. Toyota A-team runners won the last three of the race's seven stages, winning by more than three minutes over closest competition Aisan Kogyo as they broke the overall course record with a new mark of 4:05:35 for the 83.5 km event. Toyota's B-team finished just 16 seconds behind Aisan Kogyo, showing just how much of a stranglehold Toyota has on the Chubu Region. YKK was the top team from the tiny Hokuriku Region, finishing 9th overall in 4:13:34 but moving on to the New Year Ekiden.

In Kyoto, Kwansei Gakuin University beat regional favorite Ritsumeikan University to win the Tango University Ekiden, the 79th edition of the Osaka-area Kansai Region University Men's Ekiden Championships. Kwansei Gakuin's Naoki Nakamura took the lead on the first of the 84.4 km race's eight stages, and from there to the finish the team was never seriously challenged for the lead despite a Fourth Stage course record by Ritsumeikan's Tsuyoshi Masumoto and wins on the last two stages by Ritsumeikan men. Nearly three minutes down at the start of his run with 11.7 km to make it up, Ritsumeikan anchor Shinji Koiwa got as close as 37 seconds back Kwansei Gakuin's Ikkai Kojima but simply didn't have the ground ahead of him in which to make it all up. Kwansei Gakuin won in 4:18:09, Ritsumeikan next across the line in 4:18:46.

All across the country top high schools continued the buildup to next month's National High School Ekiden Championships with dozens of prefectural and regional championship ekidens. There were simply too many high-level races to cover, but bearing special mention was the 33rd Kinki Region High School Girls Ekiden. On the 6.0 km First Stage Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. senior Nozomi Tanaka, who ran 8:54.27 to win last month's National Sports Festival Women's 3000 m, blasted a new course record of 18:51 for the opening leg, leaving Chinatsu Tarumoto of Suma Gakuen H.S. and other competition over 40 seconds behind.

Nishiwaki Kogyo finished only 4th overall in the end over a minute and a half behind 2016 national champions Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S., but her powerful stage win meant Tanaka picked up her sixth-straight win since finishing 2nd in the 3000 m at the summer's National High School Track and Field Championships. Tanaka has at least three more ekiden runs before her graduation in March, and if she can go her last ekiden season undefeated it will be a fitting end before she goes to the non-ekiden-oriented Doshisha University in April.

19-Yr-Old Munakata Breaks Miura's U20 NR to Win Ageo City Half Marathon

The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin

Ageo City Half Marathon Preview and Streaming

This weekend's big race is the Ageo City Half Marathon , the next stop on the collegiate men's circuit. Most of the universities bound for the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden use Ageo to thin down the list of contenders for their final Hakone rosters, and with JRN's development program that sends the first two Japanese collegiate finishers in Ageo to the United Airlines NYC Half every year a lot of coaches put in some of their A-listers too. That gives Ageo legendary depth and fast front-end speed, with a 1:00:47 course record last year from Kenyan corporate leaguer Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon) and the top 26 all clearing 63 minutes. Since a lot of programs just enter everybody on their rosters you never really know who on the entry list is actually going to show up, but if even a quarter of the people at the top end of this year's list run it'll be a great race, even if conditions are looking likely to be a bit warmer than ideal. Chuo Gakuin University 's Reishi Yoshi

10000 m NR Attempt In the Works Saturday at Hachioji Long Distance - Streaming and Preview

There are a bunch of other time trial meets this weekend and next, but Saturday's Hachioji Long Distance is the last big meet for Japanese men, 8 heats of Wavelight-paced 10000 m finely graded from target times of 28:50 down to 26:59 for the fastest heat. Heat 6 at 17:55 local time is effectively the B-race, with 35 Japan-based Kenyans targeting 27:10 at the front end, and in a lot of cases a spot on their teams at the New Year Ekiden national championship on Jan. 1. Corporate teams are only allowed to field one non-Japanese athlete in the New Year Ekiden, and only on its shortest stage, and getting to that has a big impact on African athletes' contracts and renewal prospects. Toyota Boshoku , Yasukawa Denki , Chugoku Denryoku , Aisan Kogyo , JR Higashi Nihon , Subaru and 2024 national champion Toyota are all fielding two Kenyans, and Aichi Seiko three. For people like Toyota's Felix Korir and Samuel Kibathi , getting as close to the 27:10 target time as they can and

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