japan running news

On Mar. 16 the JAAF announced the Japanese marathon team for this August's Jakarta Asian Games. Hiroto Inoue (MHPS) and Hayato Sonoda (Kurosaki Harima) make up the men's squad, with Keiko Nogami (Juhachi Ginko) and Hanae Tanaka (Shiseido) named to the women's team.

A member of the Japanese national team for last summer's London World Championships, Inoue ran an all-time Japanese #4 time of 2:06:54 at February's Tokyo Marathon, the 2nd-placing Japnaese man behind national record setter Yuta Shitara (Honda). Sonoda ran a PB of 2:09:34 to finish in the top Japanese position at 2nd overall earlier in February at the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon.

The silver medalist at November's Asian Championships marathon, Nogami was 5th earlier this month at the Nagoya Women's Marathon in a PB of 2:26:33. Tanaka was next behind her in Nagoya in 6th in 2:27:40, the only member of the Asian Games team not to have yet qualified for the MGC Race 2020 Olympic trials race. A meda…

Japan dominated the 14th Asian Cross Country Championships Thursday in Guiyang, China, winning all four team gold medals to hold the hosts China back to silver in every race.

Japan's only individual gold came in the Junior Women's race, one of its usual areas of strength. Yuna Wada led a Japanese sweep of the top four positions to win the 6 km race in 20:43 with scoring teammates Ririka Hironaka and Tomomi Musembi Takamatsu just behind.

Wada Yuna of Japan wins Junior Women’s 6km cross country race of 14th Asian Cross Country Championship . Japan also won Team championship pic.twitter.com/Q6l0b48pKV — Asian Athletics (@asianathletics) March 15, 2018
With the meet also serving as China's National Championships Chinese athletes won the individual gold in the other three races, Dan Li, Cairen Suolong and Jianhua Peng all showing better closing speed to beat their Japanese rivals by 3~4 seconds. Li won the Senior Women's 8 km by 3 seconds over Japan's Yukari Abe, leadi…

On Mar. 12 the JAAF announced that Miyuki Uehara (Daiichi Seimei), a Rio de Janeiro Olympian in the women's 5000 m, has withdrawn from the Mar. 24 Valencia World Half Marathon Championships after sustaining an injury to her right Achilles tendon.

source article 
https://www.jiji.com/jc/article?k=2018031200777&g=spo
translated by Brett Larner

Two-time 1500 m Olympian Meskerem Assefa (Ethiopia) ran down favorite Valary Jemeli (Kenya) with 4 km to go to win the 2018 Nagoya Women's Marathon, with the home town crowd wowed by the debut of the latest next big thing, 22-year-old Hanami Sekine (Japan Post).

Supported by three pacers, a lead pack of seven including Assefa, Jemeli, Sekine, Ethiopian Bahraini Merima Mohamed, Saitama International Marathon winner Flomena Cheyech Daniel (Kenya) and top-ranked Japanese women Reia Iwade (Dome) and Rei Ohara (Tenmaya) went through halfway in a decent 1:11:32. This proved too hot for a few of the past next big things to have run well in Nagoya the last few years, as Sairi Maeda (Daihatsu), 2:22:48 in Nagoya three years ago, and Mao Kiyota (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC), 2:23:47 last year, were off the back of the pack in the first 10 km.

By 25 km Cheyech, Ohara and Iwade joined them off the back, leaving only Sekine in contention with the African trio of Jemeli, Assefa and Mohammed. Sekine, a…

Japan’s domestic elite marathon season wraps up Sunday with the Nagoya Women’s Marathon, the final race in the first season of qualification for the MGC Race, Japan’s new 2020 Olympic trials marathon to be held in late 2019. In its first season the MGC Race has succeeded in unifying Japan’s disparate national team selection races into what feels like an actual series, one that fans have gotten excited about and which has, at least on the men’s side, driven performances to a higher level. As of right now, thirteen Japanese men have met the MGC Race’s strict qualification criteria, six of them at the Tokyo Marathon alone. Heading into Nagoya only three women have qualified. Will we see another rush of qualifiers this weekend?

On paper it could happen. Since its rebranding as the world’s largest women-only marathon, Nagoya has consistently produced among the best depth-at-quality in the world, its course, weather and fields conducive to seeing a lot of people running fast times. In theo…

On Mar. 6 the JAAF announced the Japanese women's and men's teams for the 2018 World Half Marathon Championships scheduled for Mar. 24 in Valencia, Spain. The women's team has few surprises, made up of the top two Japanese women from December's Sanyo Ladies Half Marathon, Miyuki Uehara (Daiichi Seimei) and Mao Ichiyama (Wacoal), the top Japanese women at February's Marugame Half and National Corporate Half Marathon, Kaori Morita (Panasonic) and Yuka Hori (Panasonic), and high-potential marathoner Honami Maeda (Tenmaya), winner of August's Hokkaido Marathon and 2nd at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon in 2:23:46.

Maeda's inclusion is clearly geared to give one of the people the JAAF views as potential 2020 Tokyo Olympics marathon team material some international championships racing experience, and that decision making process is even more clearly at work in the men's team selection. #1-ranked man Kenta Murayama (Asahi Kasei), holde…

Convicted of shoplifting from a convenience store in her hometown of Ashikaga, Tochigi, former World Championships marathoner and current restaurant employee Yumiko Hara, 36, has been arrested again on suspicion of shoplifting in Gunma following her previous conviction. The Maebashi District Prosecutor's Office Ota Branch has charged Hara with theft.

The charges were brought on Mar. 2. According to the indictment, on Feb. 9 at about 8:45 p.m. Hara stole a bag of candy and two other items with a total value of 382 yen (~$3.60 USD) from a supermarket in Ota, Gunma. The Gunma Prefectural Police Department said that Hara was stopped by supermarket staff and then arrested by Ota officers on the current charges. Hara denied the charges, saying, "I meant to return the items before leaving the store."

In November Hara was sentenced to one year imprisonment with a three-year suspension before implementation of the sentence for shoplifting makeup and food from a convenience store…

http://citiusmag.com/japanese-marathoning-explored-brett-larner/

On Mar. 4 it was learned that Hiroto Inoue (25, MHPS), 4th place in last week's Tokyo Marathon in an all-time Japanese #4 time of 2:06:54, intends to run for Japan at August's Jakarta Asian Games. Following the final selection race for the Asian Games team, yesterday's Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon, MHPS head coach Jun Kuroki revealed, "Inoue plans to take part."

Suguru Osako (NOP), the top Japanese man in Fukuoka, and national record breaker Yuta Shitara (Honda) have both passed on the Asian Games national team. The weather conditions in sub-equatorial Jakarta are expected to be severe, but with just as tough conditions expected for the Tokyo Olympics and its MGC Race trials event the Asian Games represent an excellent test run opportunity. Coach Kuroki also commented, "The only question mark so far has been in our preparations for last August's London World Championships."

Kuroki and Inoue plan to work on measures to deal with the heat prior to the …

Sunday morning featured two big half marathons in Tokyo and Kyushu, both impacted by an unseasonal heat wave that swept the country over the weekend. At the National University Men's Half Marathon in Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park, Ryuya Kajitani (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) timed a break perfectly to win his first national title in 1:03:20. Hanging back in a secondary pack as rivals Takeshi Nishida (Tokai Univ.) and Shogo Ise (Komazawa Univ.) duked it out up front through most of the race, Kajitani went to the front with 5 km to go. Ise tried to match him but fell behind and ended up 2nd in 1:03:31, Nishida another 5 seconds back in 1:03:36 for 3rd. Four-time Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin placed three runners in the top ten without running any of its A-list men, a sign that depth was down overall from some of the record-breaking mass finishes in recent years.

National University Men’s Half leaders 14:47 at 5k. Huge uninterrupted pack. pic.twitter.com/zBykCalXok — Japan Running News (@JRNHea…

First-timers brought most of the day's best action to the 73rd running of the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon. Unseasonably hot temperatures meant times were never really in the cards, and a slow opening 10 km left a pack of over 40 together until well into the race. Early casualties included 2:09:31 man Takuya Fukatsu (Asahi Kasei), Keita Shitara (Hitachi Butsuryu) and Tadesse Abraham (Switzerland), but it wasn't until the second half that things started to get complicated.

With the pace staying true to a high-2:07 finish time people fell off the pack in twos and threes after rounding the turnaround point just past halfway, but what made this race unusual was that they kept coming back. 2:07:39 man Masato Imai (Toyota Kyushu), 2017 Gold Coast Marathon winner Takuya Noguchi (Konica Minolta) and last year's Ehime Marathon runner-up Yohei Suzuki (Aisan Kogyo) fell off together, then came back together, then fell off again. European champion Daniele Meucci (Italy) was there, the…

Huge bonuses are just flying around this week.

On Feb. 28 the Nidec corporation, parent company of Pyeongchang Winter Olympics women's speed skating double gold medalist Nana Takagi's sponsor Nidec Sankyo, announced that it would award her a bonus of 40 million yen (~$378,000 USD) for her gold medals. The JOC and Japan Skating Federation will each award Takagi and additional 10 million yen, bringing her total to 60 million yen (~$568,000 USD).

At almost the same time, on Feb. 26 Tokyo Marathon Yuta Shitara (Honda) received a 100 million yen bonus (~$946,000 USD) from the National Corporate Athletics Federation for setting a new Japanese national record of 2:06:11 at the Feb. 25 Tokyo Marathon.

The million-dollar question is how much tax will they have to pay? Bonuses from the JOC and member organizations, 5 million yen for gold, 2 million for silver, and 1 million for bronze, are tax-exempt. Bonuses from other organizations and sponsors are subject to taxation.

In Takagi'…

At a press conference on Mar. 1 at the Grandvrio Hotel in Tokushima, the organizing committee of the Mar. 25 Tokushima Marathon 2018 announced that London Olympics marathon bronze medalist and all-time 4th-fastest man Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich (Kenya) and others will run Tokushima as invited athletes. 14,200 people, 8,461 from within Tokushima prefecture, 5,558 from elsewhere in Japan and 181 from abroad, are entered in this year's race.

To elevate the level of competition at the race, Tokushima organizers will for the first time invite three Kenyan athletes. Kipsang has a best time of 2:03:13 and won last year's Tokyo Marathon. The Tokushima Marathon course record of 2:15:25 was set in 2014 by Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't).

Domestic invited athletes include Yoshihiko Ishikawa (29, Nichiaka Kagaku), Toshiharu Takai (31, Miyoshi T&F Assoc.) and Kana Unno (25, Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo). Ishikawa won last year's 24-Hour Ultra World Championships in Northern Ireland…

Things are buzzing in Japan right now in a way they haven't for a long, long time. Yuta Shitara's 2:06:11 national record last weekend in Tokyo, Hiroto Inoue joining him under 2:07, and a record-breaking group of seven other Japanese men at the 2:08 to 2:09 level have everyone believing. Believing that they can do it too. The first test of that belief comes Sunday at the last main marathon of the Japanese season, the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon.

The hoop that made so many Japanese men jump so high last week was qualification for Japan's new 2020 Olympic trials, the MGC Race. Sub-2:08:30 and you're in. Sub-2:11:00 and in the top three Japanese? You're in. Sub-2:10 and in the top six Japanese? You're in too. As Kohei Ogino and Tadashi Isshiki, 7th and 8th Japanese in Tokyo in 2:09:36 and 2:09:43, found out, people are taking qualification seriously. Lake Biwa has had more editions with five Japanese men sub-2:10 than any other marathon, and with the quality of f…