Purdue Over Maeda at Sanyo Ladies Half, Cliff Betters Own Canadian NR

The first of Japan's selection races for next year's World Half Marathon Championships, the Sanyo Ladies Road Race saw a pack of seven including last year's winner Honami Maeda (Tenmaya), 2:21 marathoner Yuka Ando (Wacoal), the U.K.'s Charlotte Purdue, Canadian national record holder Rachel Cliff and others stay together until almost 15 km before Purdue put the pedal down. Maeda, winner of September's MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials, tried to stay with her, but Purdue had the win in her, taking first in 1:08:45, the fastest time of her career on a record-legal course.

Maeda was next in 1:09:08, bettering her PB from her win last year by 4 seconds. Moving up from a 2nd-place finish in the 10 km in Sanyo last year, her teammate Sara Miyake (Tenmaya) was 3rd in 1:09:23 to give Tenmaya a good chance of having two women on the Worlds team. Ando was the only other woman under 70 minutes at 1:09:38. Cliff, who broke the Canadian marathon NR in Nagoya in March, raced Rui Aoyama (Univ. Ent.) to the line for 5th, losing out by 2 seconds but cutting 2 seconds off her own half marathon NR with a new mark of 1:10:06.

Following a stage win at last month's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships, Ethiopian Husan Zeyituna (Denso) outran Kenyans Joanne Kipkemoi (Kyudenko) and Agnes Mukari (Kurashiki H.S.) in the 10 km, dropping them near halfway for the win in 32:14. Kipkemoi came close to hanging on but had to settle for 2nd in 32:16. Japan's Misaki Hayashida (Kyudenko) tried to run Mukari down for 3rd but missed out, taking 4th in 32:48.

38th Sanyo Ladies Road Race

Okayama, 12/15/19
complete results

Half Marathon
1. Charlotte Purdue (Great Britain) - 1:08:45 (PB)
2. Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) - 1:09:08 - PB
3. Sara Miyake (Tenmaya) - 1:09:23 - debut
4. Yuka Ando (Wacoal) - 1:09:38 - PB
5. Rui Aoyama (Universal Entertainment) - 1:10:04
6. Rachel Cliff (Canada) - 1:10:06 - NR
7. Ayumi Hagiwara (Toyota Jidoshokki) - 1:10:59
8. Shiho Takechi (Yamada Denki) - 1:11:18
9. Ayano Ikeuchi (Denso) - 1:11:21
10. Ako Matsumoto (Denso) - 1:11:26

10 km
1. Husan Zeyituna (Denso) - 32:14
2. Joanne Kipkemoi (Kyudenko) - 32:16
3. Agnes Mukari (Kurashiki H.S.) - 32:33
4. Misaki Hayashida (Kyudenko) - 32:48
5. Toshika Tamura (Hitachi) - 32:53
6. Natsumi Ozawa (Hitachi) - 32:56
7. Winnie Jerotich (Kyudenko) - 33:06
8. Ayano Ikemitsu (Kagoshima Ginko) - 33:31
9. Nana Sato (Starts) - 33:42
10. Mei Kanemaru (Miyazaki Ginko) - 33:44

© 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Osako Breaks Marathon NR for 3rd Time - Weekend Roundup

It looked like it was going to be a big weekend, and it delivered. For the 3rd time in his career Suguru Osako broke the men's marathon NR, running 1 second under the standing record to take 4th in the Valencia Marathon in 2:04:55. All the way to 40 km he was steady on 2:58/km, 2:05:10 pace, and like a surprising number of other people in both the men's and women's races, there was a massive jump over the last 2.195 km from his projected finish time to his actual one. His run put Osako back on top of the Japanese charts, put the average of Japan's 10 fastest marathon times of the year under 2:06 for the first time, and got him into the L.A. Olympics marathon trials. Valencia has been trying to get top-tier Japanese athletes to come for years, and now that they finally managed to do it it paid off in a big way. Expect more next year. Back home, former Takushoku University captain Derese Workneh won a 3-way race against Toyota teammates Kazuya Nishiyama and Bedan Ka...

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