16-year-old 11th-grader and future half marathon national record holder Hitomi Niiya becomes the first and only woman to break 19 minutes on the 6.0 km National High School Girls Ekiden Championships First Stage at the 2004 race.
The Dec. 1 Fukuoka International Marathon is the first of this winter season's big selection races for the home soil team for next year's Tokyo World Championships, and the domestic field is a great one. Kenya Sonota , 2:05:59 in Tokyo last year, and 2:06 men Yusuke Nishiyama , Yuya Yoshida , Kazuya Nishiyama and Daisuke Doi make up the main contenders to get a spot, with internationals Lemeck Too , Jie He , Bethwel Yegon , Vincent Raimoi , last year's winner Michael Githae , and Shaohui Yang perfectly positioned to add momentum to the shot at the 2:06:30 Worlds standard that they'll all be taking. 8 other Japanese men in the 2:07 to 2:09 range make it one of the most competitive Fukuoka editions in a long, long time. Last year Githae outkicked Yang by 1 second to win 2:07:08 to 2:07:09, Yang with a Chinese NR that was broken a few months later by He in Wuxi. Chinese men's marathoning has momentum right now too, and it wouldn't be surprising to see either He
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