Skip to main content

Weekend Track Highlights

The IAAF World Relays in Yokohama were the weekend's main track action, but the first round of regional corporate championships and a few other meets brought distance action across the country.

The women's 10000 m was the highlight at the Kansai Region Corporate Championships, with Wacoal teammates Yuka Ando and Mao Ichiyama recovering from decent runs at the London Marathon last month to go 1st and 5th, Ando the fastest in 32:43.18. Their fellow MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials qualifier Madoka Nakano (Noritz) was 2nd in 32:50.18, doubling the next day in the 5000 m where she was 5th in 16:07.24. Former Hakone Ekiden rivals and now teammates at NTT Nishi Nihon, Kenyans Patrick Wambui and Dominic Nyairo went 1-2 in the men's 10000 m in 28:41.84 and 28:43.86. Ryota Motegi (Sumitomo Denko) just missed the meet record in the men's 1500 m, winning in 3:44.12.

At the Chubu Region Corporate Championships Kenyans Rodgers Chumo Kwemoi (Aisan Kogyo) and Macharia Ndirangu (Aichi Seiko) raced to the line, Kwemoi getting the top spot in 27:55.27 to Ndirangu's 27:55.73. Ndirangu returned the next day to win the 5000 m in 13:35.00. Helen Ekarare (Toyota Jidoshokki) led the women's action with a 4:11.52 win in the women's 1500 m, taking more than 3 seconds off the foreign-born athlete meet record.

The Chugoku Region Corporate Championships only held its 5000 m this weekend, the rest of the meet scheduled for next. Jun Nobuto (Mazda) was the only man to break 14 minutes with a 13:58.71, but the bigger news was a 14:06.79  for 4th by last year's Hokkaido Marathon winner Naoki Okamoto (Chugoku Denryoku), another step along the road to recovery from a fall at February's Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon that resulted in a broken elbow. Sara Miyake (Tenmaya) was the only woman to break 16 minutes, finishing 1st of five in 15:58.83.

Not much happened at the Hokuriku Region Corporate Championships, where a 29:19.88 win in the men's 10000 m by Hiroki Suzuki (YKK) was probably the performance of the meet.

In university action, the first half of the Kansai Region University Championships went down at Kyoto's Nishi-Kyogoku Field. The men's 4x100 m saw a 39.05 region and meet record by Kinki University, a 66.44 m meet record in the men's hammer throw by Kentaro Yoshino (Osaka Taiiku Univ.), a 15.62 m men's triple jump D2 meet record from Seiji Kobayashi (Setsunan Univ.), a 60.98 m D2 men's hammer throw meet record by Keito Tamura (Meiji Kokusai Iryo Univ.), and double women's triple jump meet records of 13.03 m +1.8 and 12.70 m -0.4 by Hina Tagami (Kansai Univ.) and Karin Era (Mukogawa Joshi Univ.).  The top distance mark was in the women's 10000 m, where Natsu Hashimoto (Kyoto Sangyo Univ.) won in 33:36.85.

The weekend's other main meet was the latest edition of the Nittai University Time Trials series in Yokohama. Japan's two best candidates for the women's 5000 m at this year's Doha World Championships Tomoka Kimura (Shiseido) and Nozomi Tanaka (Toyota Jidoshokki TC) went 1-2 in the 1500 m, Kimura in a PB of 4:12.06 and Tanaka 0.07 off hers in 4:13.75. Tabitha Kamau (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) won the lone women's 5000 m heat in 15:48.49. Top men's marks went to Kazuki Kawamura (Meiji Univ.) with a 3:44.96 in the men's 1500 m A-heat, Kenya Sonota (JR Higashi Nihon) at 13:58.50 for 5000 m, and Kento Nishi (Tsukuba Univ.) with 29:52.34 for 10000 m.

© 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more