2018 Jakarta Asian Games men's marathon gold medalist Hiroto Inoue (26, MHPS) announced Jan. 10 that he this season he will tackle one of the world's highest-level races, April's Boston Marathon. "Not having pacers in a race adds its own kind of stress," he said. "I want to race it seriously as a step toward what's coming up."
The Boston Marathon is famous for its uphills late in the race. September's MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials event also features an uphill at 37 km, and the opportunity to get the same kind of experience was enough to convince him to run. Originally Inoue had been looking at running March's Tokyo Marathon where he ran 2:06:54 last year, but, he said, "I want to run for time when the time comes to run for it. This year is about finding out how competitively I can race."
Inoue made his announcement just before departing for a training camp in New Zealand along with his MHPS teammate Ryo Kiname, 28. Targeting the Tokyo Marathon again this season after running 2:08:08 there last year, Kiname commented, "Last year doing the Tokyo Marathon after training in New Zealand felt like it went well. This year I want to do the same thing and come out of it feeling ready to go sub-2:10 again."
2018 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon winner Hayato Sonoda (Kurosaki Harima) and last year's Boston winner Yuki Kawauchi will also run. All three have already qualified for the MGC Race.
source article:
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20190110-00000141-spnannex-spo
translated by Brett Larner
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