The National High School Ekiden Championships were the weekend's main event, but across Japan there were at least three other high-level road races. And one abroad.
Benefitting from the Taiwanese government's early steps to get control of the COVID-19 situation and its population's responsibility in sticking to the protocols, the Taipei Marathon achieved what no other large-scale race could: a full-sized mass-participation field with 9,000 marathoners and 19,000 half-marathoners, and an international elite field, all within the 2020 calendar year. Not a reduced field, not a micro race, but a big city marathon the way we used to know them.
International athletes had to undergo a two-week quarantine in their hotel rooms, which organizers had fitted out with treadmills, but while most of them including Japan's Hiroko Baino (Memolead) reported negative effects from the treadmill running on their performances there was still a new men's course record of 2:09:18 from Paul Lonyangata (Kenya) and a near-miss from women's winner Askale Merachi (Ethiopia) at 2:28:31. Fresh from breaking the 10000 m national record two weeks ago, local Chun-Yu Tsao also took two minutes off her own national record to finish 4th in 2:32:41. Baino struggled with leg pain mid-race and finished 6th in 2:45:53.
And behind them, tens of thousands of amateurs doing what the rest of the world can only dream of doing six, nine, twelve months down the road. Overall the message was pretty clear: when we were all told that we had to eat our vegetables if we wanted to get dessert, a lot of countries pouted, took a few bites and made faces, or threw a tantrum. Taiwan said, "Yay, dessert!" It had to have been the sweetest one they've ever tasted.
Back in Japan, women's Olympic marathon team members Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) and Mao Ichiyama (Wacoal) wrapped their seasons at the Sanyo Ladies Road Race half marathon. Usually the top women's half marathon of the year in Japan, this year saw debuting duo Husan Zeyituna (Denso) and Joan Chepkemoi (Kyudenko) take the top two spots in 1:09:24 and 1:09:28. Ichiyama was 3rd in 1:10:17, with Maeda only 9th in 1:10:39. Times overall were slower than expected, but the depth was excellent with 12 women under 71 minutes and 22 under 73.
Kenyan high schooler Agnes Mwikali (Kurashiki H.S.) won Sanyo's 10 km race in an impressive 31:39 debut, 24 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor Desta Burka (Denso). Burka's teammate Miku Moribayashi was the top Japanese woman at 4th in 32:22.
One of the favorites to win next month's Hakone Ekiden, Juntendo University ran a full squad at the 134th running of the Kanto 10 Mile Road Race in Chiba. More of a workout effort than a hard race, Juntendo still took the top 19 places led by Shunuke Shikama in 48:34. Fans breathed a sigh of relief as 1st-year Ryuji Miura, the U20 national record holder for 3000 m steeplechase and half marathon, finished 8th in a controlled 49:28 after an accident in training knocked him out of the steeple just before the National Championships earlier this month.
At Yamaguchi's Hofu Yomiuri Marathon, the biggest news came in the visually impaired women's race where Misato Michishita (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) took nine seconds off her own world record to win in 2:54:13. That time put her six minutes ahead of her nearest competitor globally, further solidifying her position as the favorite for the gold medal at the Tokyo Paralympics. Men's visually impaired winner Tadashi Horikoshi (NTT Nishi Nihon) set a new Asian record of 2:22:28 to win by over 15 minutes.
The women's marathon saw a great head-to-head race between favorites Shiho Kaneshige (GRlab Kanto) and Yomogi Akasaka (Starts). Together almost the entire way, Akasaka edged away just before 40 km to win in 2:29:21, a PB by three minutes. Kaneshige, a Yamaguchi native, was just ten seconds behind in 2:29:31, 40 seconds off the PB she set in Osaka in January. But despite the disappointment of a narrow loss on home ground Kaneshige's performance earned her the distinction of being the only Japanese woman to break 2:30 twice in 2020.
With solid pacing from Kenyans Nicholas Kosimbei and Michael Githae the men's race stayed reliably on low-2:10 pace right up til their departure at 30 km, and even beyond. That kept a pack of ten close together the entire way, from which 2019 Kyoto Marathon winner Tatsuya Maruyama (Yachiyo Kogyo) emerged with 5 km to go. With a 1:01:58 PB at the Osaka Half Marathon in January, a 13:41.20 best for 5000 m at September's National Corporate Championships and a 27:52.27 PB for 10000 m two weeks ago at the National Championships, Maruyama blazed a 6:14 closing split from 40 km to the finish to drop a seven-minute PB of 2:09:36 for the win by nearly a minute. Six men were under 2:11 and nine under 2:12, like Sanyo excellent depth to end the year. A total of 349 people finished Hofu, which restricted its field to corporate league-registered runners and locals.
© 2020 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Comments
Exactly right. All of these requirements, mandates, restrictions, expectations, recommendations are incredibly easy to adopt. I heard comments from a woman in Tokyo to the effect of "when I walk down the street, my mask is a sign of respect for you and your mask is a sign of respect for me." Automatically showing respect for others seems to be a foreign concept in the US, even in supposedly enlightened pockets. Here, a common attitude seems to be, "you have to earn my respect." That is certainly a hindrance in situations like this, to put it mildly.