38 Heats of 10000 m, Hachioji, Queens and More

38 Heats of 10000 m, Hachioji, Queens and More - Long Weekend Preview

It's another big weekend on the track and roads. Two weeks out from the National Track and Field Championships long distance segment, the top tier of men not racing there will be at the Hachioji Long Distance Meet in Tokyo's western suburbs for nine heats of men's 10000 m. The whole meet is being livestreamed for the first time starting at 11:30 a.m. Saturday Japan time, with JRN's Mika Tokairin MCing a commentary crew that includes track and ekiden great Tsuyoshi Ugachi.

The B-heat is the main event, with 22 of the top Japan-based Kenyans on the list including Richard Kimunyan Yator (Hitachi Butsuryu) and Andrew Lorot (Subaru). With only one stage at the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden national championships open to non-citizens, many of the Kenyans will be squaring off against their corporate sponsor teammates so coaches can make an informed decision about who gets to run come Jan. 1. Interesting Japanese entrants include #1 collegiate half marathoner Shoya Kawase (Kogakkan Univ.) and former Komazawa University ekiden heavyweight Shinobu Kubota (Toyota), back in form last weekend at the Chubu Region Corporate Ekiden after a long injury.

Also on the track Saturday are the Chugoku Region Corporate Time Trials in Hiroshima, the Heisei Kokusai University Time Trials in Saitama, and the Waseda University Time Trials also in Saitama. Chugoku has three heats of men's 10000 m on the menu with notable names including former Yamanashi Gakuin University star Dominic Nyairo (NTT Nishi Nihon). Heisei Kokusai has enough overflow from Hachioji that its twelve 10000 m heats are spilling over onto Sunday. The biggest names there are three of New Year Ekiden champ Asahi Kasei's big guns, Akira Aizawa, Shuho Dairokuno and Takashi Ichida, in the 5000 m A-heat ahead of planned runs in the 10000 m at Nationals. Waseda has its Hakone-bound team running 10000 m along with athletes from rival universities including Meiji University.

In Kanagawa, the long distance segment of May's postponed Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships and the annual Kanto Region University Time Trials meet have been combined into one massive two-day meet over the back half of the long weekend. The faster end of the field will race Sunday with men's and women's 5000 m, 10000 m and 10000 mRW on the program. Monday's program has ten heats of men's 10000 m and one women's 10000 m.

On the roads the main action is Sunday's Queens Ekiden, the season-ending corporate women's national championships. Last year Japan Post led start-to-finish off a course record-breaking opening run by Ririka Hironaka. Hironaka cracked 15 minutes for 5000 m earlier this fall and is stronger than ever, but one of its other main stars, Olympic marathon team member Ayuko Suzuki, has been out most of the year with injury and leaves Japan Post vulnerable to last year's Honami Maeda-led 4th-placer Tenmaya, Wacoal and others at the front end of the field.

The main question is whether Princess Ekiden winner Sekisui Kagaku is up to the job of making it to the top here. Sekisui Kagaku won Princess, the qualifying race for the national championships, last year but finished only 9th at Queens and missed the eight-deep podium. Since then they've added half marathon NR holder Hitomi Niiya and last year's double 800 m and 1500 m national champ Ran Urabe to their lineup, which was more than enough to give them the win again at Princess this season. But beyond that pair and its previous leader Sayaka Sato the team's roster thins out quickly. They usually say that one star or a couple of good runners can't win an ekiden against a more complete team, so we'll probably be seeing that put to the test come Sunday. Look for Yamada Holdings to be a dark horse for the podium in the complete team category.

The Queens Ekiden site will have live shots from the exchange zones during the race, but it doesn't look like there's an official livestream of the TBS broadcast. TBS will have the race on starting at 11:50 a.m. Sunday Japan time. If you're not in Japan, options like mov3.co, iTVer, and TVJapanLive that might work, and unofficial streams tend to pop up on Youtube once the race gets underway. We'll be doing English commentary on @JRNLive as usual. See you then.

Chepkirui Over Sato Again to Win 2nd-Straight Nagoya Women's Marathon, Chen Breaks Malaysian NR (updated)

This year's Nagoya Women's Marathon felt like a changing of the guard, with some the bigger domestic names over the last few years fading early and a lot of newer faces stepping up with quality debuts or second marathons. The front group was set to be paced for 2:20 flat with the 2nd group at 2:23:30 to hit the auto-qualifying time for the 2027 MGC Race, Japan's L.A. Olympics marathon trials race in Nagoya. Up front things went out OK, but after a 33:10 split at 10 km Ayuko Suzuki , 2:21:22 here 2 years ago, lost touch, ultimately finishing 23rd in 2:33:28. Windy conditions started to play with pacers' ability to keep things steady and the pace slowed majorly over the next 10 km, but even with a 34:05 second 10 km there were big-name casualties. 2024 Nagoya winner Yuka Ando was next to drop, ending up 17th in 2:30:32. NR holder Honami Maeda was next, followed quickly by Bahraini Kenyan Eunice Chumba and debuting Wakana Kabasawa . Maeda faded to 21st in 2:31:21, whil...

16 Women and 26 Men on the Current Olympic Trials Qualifier List

Last weekend's Nagoya Women's Marathon and the Tokyo Marathon the weekend before brought the main part of the first year of qualification for the Marathon Grand Championship Race, Japan's L.A. Olympics marathon trials to be held in Nagoya in October, 2027, to an end. There are still a few races like the Nagano Marathon and overseas World Athletics platinum label races this season where people might qualify, but for the most part we're not likely to see many new additions until August's Hokkaido Marathon, where the qualifying period opened last year. As of right now 16 women and 26 men have qualified, although the first woman to make the cut, Ai Hosoda , announced that she was retiring after Tokyo earlier this month. Out of the 16 women to have qualified so far, Mikuni Yada is the fastest with her 2:19:57 debut at Osaka Women's in January. Including Hosoda that makes 2 qualifiers for the Edion corporate team, but Daihatsu has the biggest share of the field so ...

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

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