Skip to main content

Kawauchi Wins Hasuda Road Race 3 km



The Hasuda Road Race took place Nov. 24 in and around Hasuda's Kurohama Park. 3000 people from within the city and elsewhere took part. The winner of April's Boston Marathon, civil servant runner Yuki Kawauchi, 31, took part as a special guest. It was the seventh time the local amateur sports group Hasuda Runties has put on the race in conjunction with sponsor Asahi Newspapers. Runners can enjoy the unique twist of eating sweets both during the race and after finishing.

Kawauchi ran in the 3 km division, winning it in 8:40. It was believed to be his best time on the Hasuda course. Afterwards he participated in a talk show event with some of his former teachers, sharing episodes from his life. Quiet in junior high school, he was elected head of the student council on a platform of promoting a campaign for students to collect manufacturers' points in order to get free stationery. In high school, he told himself, "If you give in to drowsiness you'll never succeed as an athlete." As a result he always stared straight into his teachers' eyes during class and nodded constantly.

One of his former teachers asked him about the Tokyo Olympics. Kawauchi laughed as he answered, "If they move the start time earlier I'll think about it." On Dec. 2 Kawauchi will run the Fukuoka International Marathon, where he will race former national record holder and fellow Saitama native Yuta Shitara (Honda) and others.

source article:
http://www.hasuda-runties.com/img/asahi_kiji.jpg
translated by Brett Larner

Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Most-Read This Week

CR Holder Teruki Shimada Returns to Launceston Half - Preview and Streaming

Last year's McGrath Launceston Running Festival Peppers Silo Half Marathon in Tasmania, Australia shaped out into a great Australia vs. Japan dual meet , with Jessica Stenson outrunning Yumi Yoshikawa to take the women's title in a 1:09:51 CR, and Teikyo University school record holder Teruki Shimada executing a tactically brilliant race to drop Isaac Heyne , then-NR holder Brett Robinson , and Teikyo teammate Jinya Ozaki for the win in 1:01:12, just a second off the Australian all-comers record. Marathon NR holder Andy Buchanan took that record down to 1:01:08 at the Gold Coast Half a month later, but its chances of surviving this weekend aren't looking good. Shimada leads last year's top 4 back to Launceston this year, and there's a lot of tough new competition. 2025 National Corporate Half winner Tsubasa Ichiyama , Australia's Haftu Strintzos , new Teikyo record holder Yuta Asakawa and American Ethan Shuley have all run faster that Buchanan's rec...

Murayama and Sasaki Making U.S. Debut at New York Mini 10 km

Every year since 2012 that there's been a United Airlines NYC Half , JRN has partnered with the NYRR and November's Ageo City Half Marathon to bring two top-tier collegiate Japanese men to the NYC Half for what's usually been their international debuts. For years we've wanted to extend that program to include top collegiate women, but that has always faced 2 problems. For one, while the half marathon distance is the main focus for Japanese collegiate men due to the stage lengths at the Hakone Ekiden, few collegiate women run it. Those that do run the National University Women's Half Marathon in Matsue, held the same day as the NYC Half. This year, though, we're finally making it happen in a slightly different way. Amisa Murayama and Nazuki Sasaki of 2025 Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden national collegiate championship runner-up Tohoku Fukushi University are joining the field for the NYRR's Mastercard New York Mini 10 km on June 6. After running an 18:14 CR ...

Some Reflections on the Ekiden

by Brett Larner This ekiden season I've had a few thoughts kicking around, and watching this week's Hakone Ekiden a few of them became clearer.  These are still in progress, but at the moment this is what I'm thinking in terms of running as a spectator sport and about the quality of Japanese men's distance running right now. Quality: Japanese men's running is coming up very, very quickly.  I was in the lead car at November's Ageo City Half Marathon , where 18 men, 17 of them university runners, broke 63 minutes.  As it was going on we all thought it was a slow race because there were so many people running that pace all the way, no separation at all in the mass of the pack. See the JRN header photo above, taken just past halfway.  That's pretty unusual in Japan, especially at the university level; generally you'll get a handful of guys who run an aggressive pace and a mass running dead on a safe pace, 3:00/km in a half marathon, for example. Th...