Racing Takes Another Step Back Toward Normal With Events in Nagano and Sapporo

Moderately-sized events in Nagano and Sapporo over the weekend marked a step back toward regular racing. Trail and mountain running have been going strong for a couple of months now, with all the main events featured staggered starts with runners starting one at a time in 30-second intervals. Saturday's Nozawa Trail Fes in Nagano featured groups of 30 runners starting every 3 minutes, socially distanced while in the starting corral. Between the 33 km long course, 19.5 km short course and Sunday's kids' run, about 850 people took part.

Top-ranked Japanese mountain runner Ruy Ueda won the men's long course, which had 1850 m elevation difference, in 3:02:18, putting more than 16 minutes on runner-up Masato Kamishohara. National team member Yuri Yoshizumi had almost the same margin of victory in the women's long course race, running 3:28:25 to 2nd-placer Takako Takamura's 3:44:13. Jinnosuke Omi took the men's short course in 2:01:30 by just 20 seconds over Yu Koyama, with Maki Tanaka winning the women's short course in 2:21:45. Elevation difference in the short course was 1150 m. Timing crew specialist Takuya Fujii wrote about the race in detail here.

Also Saturday in Sapporo's Moerenuma Park, the same park where the Hokkaido University Ekiden was held two weeks ago, the Moerenuma Trial Half Marathon took place with a similar strategy to that at the Nozawa Trail Fes. Socially distanced in the starting corral, the 400 finishers went off in groups of 50 and were ranked by net time. Kiyotaka Abe, who started in a later group and had a gross time of 1:21:52, took 1st in the men's race in 1:14:30. Running in an earlier group, Takahiro Takahashi clocked 1:16:01 on gross time but placed 2nd behind Abe in 1:15:07 net. Airi Sawada won the women's race in 1:27:42 net, her gross time of 1:35:04 also the fastest of the day.

© 2020 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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