Shitara Returns to Ageo - Weekend Preview

It's yet another busy mid-ekiden season weekend, but there's no question what its biggest race is. In a country packed with all of the world's deepest half marathons the Ageo City Half Marathon is the deepest of them all, universities targeting the legendary Hakone Ekiden transforming what would otherwise be an ordinary country town road race into something really special as each team's runner try to convince their coaches they belong on the Hakone A-squad.

Since 2011 the New York Road Runners have thrown fuel on the fire by inviting the top two Japanese collegiate finishers to March's United Airlines NYC Half in a program conceived and coordinated by JRN. The first runner to earn an invite was Toyo University second-year Yuta Shitara, who went over and ran what was then the fastest time ever by a Japanese man on U.S. soil, 1:01:48, in his international road racing debut. Now the half marathon national record holder and a corporate leaguer for the Honda team, Shitara returns to Ageo this year for the first time since then to tune up for next month's Fukuoka International Marathon.

It goes without saying he's the favorite, his main competition being former Hakone Ekiden uphill darling Daichi Kamino (New Balance) and whichever of the university men decide they want to really go for it. Last year's runner-up Patrick Mathenge Wambui (Nihon Univ.), two of Tokai University's top men in Hayato Seki and Shota Onizuka, super-frosh Yuhi Nakaya (Waseda Univ.) and Shogo Ise (Komazawa Univ.), one of the two runners to earn the invite to the last NYC Half, highlight the university field entries.

Also in the field are the recently-struggling 2018 Boston Marathon champ Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) and 2017 London World Championships marathoner David Nilsson of Sweden. JRN will be on-site to cover the race live and present the two NYC trip winners with their invitations.

The other main road race action is the Kobe Marathon, now an IAAF bronze label race featuring a decently competitive international field detailed here. Corporate men's qualification for the New Year Ekiden national championships also wraps up with the combined Chubu and Hokuriku Region Corporate Ekiden in Aichi. Notable names there include Taku Fujimoto (Toyota), 2:07:57 last month at the Chicago Marathon, and Ageo-NYC alum Yusuke Nishiyama (Toyota).

Kansai Region university men will be racing their season-ending championship ekiden Saturday at the Tango University Ekiden with live coverage on the official website. A number of university men and women will be spending the weekend abroad at the Seven Hills Loop in the Netherlands. With never a moment to rest, many corporate runners from regions other than the two above will be in Hiroshima for the Chugoku Corporate Time Trials track meet Saturday.

© 2018 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

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...

Australian Male Arrested on Drug Smuggling Charges After Entering Japan for Osaka Marathon

On Apr. 9 the Kinki Region Bureau of Health, Labor and Welfare's Drug Control Division arrested Matthew Inglis Fox , 38, an Australian business owner of no known fixed address, on charges of violating the importation regulations of the Narcotics Control Act by smuggling tablets containing marijuana elements from the United States. The suspect had entered Japan in February to run in the Osaka Marathon . The suspect was arrested on suspicion of smuggling approximately 12 pills containing marijuana by sending them from a U.S. airport to Osaka's Kansai Airport using an international courier service on Feb. 19. The Osaka branch of the Customs Service discovered the tablets in arriving cargo and suspected them to be narcotics. Customs contacted the Narcotics Control Division, which then began its investigation of the case. According to the Narcotics Control Division, the suspect denies the charges. Translator's note: Fox, who received a lifetime ban from the Ageo City Half Mara...

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