After a slow start that saw it playing catchup for the first half of the 35th anniversary East Japan Women's Ekiden in Fukushima today, the Chiba prefecture team came on strong late in the race with three straight stage wins to put anchor Rika Kaseda safely 2:45 out front with 10 km to go.
A smaller version of January's National Women's Ekiden, East Japan features 18 teams made up from the best junior high school, high school, university, club, corporate and pro runners from each prefecture in the region. With their home battered by typhoons this fall the Chiba team hoped to pull of a win to give some inspiration to the people back home. Mai Shinozuka, Chika Kosakai and Rika Minami played a big role on the 6th through 8th stages, giving Kaseda, the silver medalist in the half marathon at this year's World University Games, the margin she needed to have a chance against Tokyo's Hitomi Niiya.
Last year, in her first road race back from a five-year retirement, Niiya made up 1:58 on the 10 km anchor stage to give Tokyo the win, breaking the course record in the process with a 31:08. This time Niiya confidently said she could again make up a two-minute deficit, almost exactly the difference between Kaseda's 10000 m best and her own. 2:45 was almost insurmountable, and with a 3:00 opening km Kaseda showed she was determined not to make it easy.
Going through 5 km in 16:02 Kaseda stayed strong and smooth, that kind of split meaning it would be almost impossible for Niiya to catch her unless Kaseda blew up late in the stage. Behind her Niiya was implacable, passing team after team and eating up the distance to Kaseda. At 7 km she passed last year's World U20 Championships 3000 m 4th-placer Yuna Wada, running for Nagano, and Japan's #1 amateur woman Haruka Yamaguchi of Kanagawa to move into 2nd. By the time she hit the track she was within less than 400 m of Kaseda, but could only watch as Kaseda broke the tape in 2:18:56 to give Chiba the win.
Post-race an elated Kaseda said there had been strong headwinds on parts of the course that held her back, her final finish time of 32:31 ranking her only 4th on stage time. But the winds didn't seem to slow Niiya, who took 16 seconds off her course record from last year to finish the stage in 30:52, better than her track 10000 m PB by four seconds and less than that off the national record for the same. Tokyo's time was 2:20:02, meaning she had closed 1:39 on Kaseda.
Behind her, Wada prevailed over Yamaguchi in a sprint finish for 3rd in her debut racing double digit distances, Nagano clocking 2:20:19 and Kanagawa 2:20:23. But when the smoke cleared and the stage results were out, it was Yamaguchi who had the best time after Niiya, 31:58 to Wada's 32:05, among the best performances ever by a pure Japanese amateur. Next weekend Yamaguchi will line up at the Kobe Marathon in search of her first sub-2:30.
Miyagi, Gunma, Saitama and Shizuoka rounded out the eight-deep podium. With windy conditions team times were on average over a minute slower than last year's, with most individual stages likewise slower. Most team members will now be turning their focuses to the year-ending national championship ekidens for junior high, high school, university and the corporate leagues, before coming back together Jan.12 for Kyoto's National Women's Ekiden.
35th East Japan Women's Ekiden
Fukushima, 11/10/1918 teams, 9 stages, 42.195 km
complete results
Top Individual Stage Results
First Stage (6.0 km) - Naruha Sato (Kanagawa) - 19:23
Second Stage (4.0 km) - Izumi Takamatsu (Nagano) - 13:40
Third Stage (3.0 km) - Natsumi Yamanaka (Miyagi) - 10:01
Fourth Stage (3.0 km) - Haruka Ogawa (Saitama) - 9:56
Fifth Stage (5.0875 km) - Rina Kimura (Miyagi) - 16:38
Sixth Stage (4.1075 km) - Mai Shinozuka (Chiba) - 13:17
Seventh Stage (4.0 km) - Chika Kosakai (Chiba) - 12:41
Eighth Stage (3.0 km) - Rika Minami (Chiba) - 9:21
Ninth Stage (10.0 km) - Hitomi Niiya (Tokyo) - 30:52 - CR
Team Results
1. Chiba - 2:18:56
2. Tokyo - 2:20:02
3. Nagano - 2:20:19
4. Kanagawa - 2:20:23
5. Miyagi - 2:20:47
6. Gunma - 2:21:23
7. Saitama - 2:22:03
8. Shizuoka - 2:23:43
9. Fukushima - 2:24:24
10. Ibaraki - 2:24:38
11. Tochigi - 2:25:56
12. Akita - 2:27:11
13. Aomori - 2:27:41
14. Yamagata - 2:28:21
15. Niigata - 2:28:48
16. Yamanashi - 2:29:05
17. Hokkaido - 2:30:01
18. Iwate - 2:31:51
© 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Comments
Any magic shoes, maybe Niya?
And Hitomi is part of Nike TTC Club, so she wears the Vaporfly Next% for sure...
Niiya was wearing 4% like last year.
It is a great format, though. Different generations handing off to each other, some mix of top university people racing top corporate people, etc.