Yoshimatsu Wins 7th Hofu Marathon Title, Kawauchi Over Bat-Ochir

2018 Geneva Marathon runner-up Hisae Yoshimatsu (Shunan City Hall) became the winningest champion in the Hofu Yomiuri Marathon's 49-year history Sunday, soloing a 2:38:58 to win Hofu for the 7th time. Running in cold and rainy conditions just three weeks after finishing 5th at the Osaka Marathon in 2:37:01, Yoshimatsu set off at mid-2:36 pace before slowing. Crossing halfway in 1:19:18 she turned the pace back around toward 2:37 territory before slowing again past 35 km to just squeeze under 2:39.

The fourth-fastest of her Hofu wins, Yoshimatsu beat her first winning time from way back in 2006 by 20 seconds and runner-up Chika Tawara (Team RxL) by almost 5 minutes. "I'm disappointed with my time," she told JRN post-race. "Other amateur women are running 2:34ish so it's hard to be satisfied with this. Maybe that's just being greedy." After the Osaka-Hofu double she will wrap her season in 3 weeks at China's Xiamen Marathon.

The men's race ran steadily near 2:09-flat pace until the departure of the pacers at 25 km, when it abruptly slowed by over 7 seconds per km. Two weeks after setting a Mongolian national record at the Kumamoto Kosa 10-Miler, three-time Hofu winner Ser-Od Bat-Ochir (NTN) made a few injections of pace as the lead group shrank down to a core group of five, but in the end he couldn't match the closing speed of fellow three-time winner Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't).

Kawauchi closed from 40 km to the finish in 6:30 to win in 2:11:29, his best time of the year and making him the first man to win Hofu four times. Bat-Ochir was next in 2:12:12, his fastest time since 2015, just holding off Kenyan Ezekiel Cheboitibin (Sunbelx) who was 3rd in a PB of 2:12:17. South Korean Jong-Sub Shim was 6th in 2:14:05, fading late in the race to just miss setting the fastest mark of the year by a South Korean man.

フルマラソン今年12回目！
防府読売マラソン川内優輝(31)優勝
2時間11分29秒 pic.twitter.com/O4EsOb2Mv2
— TFchannel (@tf__channel) December 17, 2018

49th Hofu Yomiuri Marathon

Hofu, Yamaguchi, 12/16/18
complete results

Women
1. Hisae Yoshimatsu (Shunan City Hall) -2:38:58
2. Chika Tawara (Team RxL) - 2:43:49
3. Chihiro Aibara (Nidaime Kiyomi Shokudo) - 2:48:09
4. Masa Shimizu (Amagasaki T&F Assoc.) - 2:48:18
5. Ai Ogo (Himeji T&F Assoc.) - 2:50:43

Men
1. Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) - 2:11:29
2. Ser-Od Bat-Ochir (Mongolia/NTN) - 2:12:12
3. Ezekiel Cheboitibin (Kenya/Sunbelx) - 2:12:17 - PB
4. Shinichi Yamashita (Takigahara SDF Base) - 2:12:28 - PB
5. Michael Githae (Kenya/Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) - 2:13:42
6. Jong-Sub Shim (South Korea) - 2:14:05
7. Kohei Oshita (Hiroshima Keizai Univ.) - 2:15:09 - PB
8. Tatsunori Hamasaki (Nanjo City Hall) - 2:20:17
9. Masashi Hashimoto (Takeda Yakuhin) - 2:20:35
10. Tomonori Sakamoto (Kanagawa T&F Assoc.) - 2:21:01

photo © 2018 M.Kawaguchi, all rights reserved
text © 2018 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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