Weekend Preview - National XC Championships and Lake Biwa

Two big events happen this weekend in western Japan. Saturday in Fukuoka are the National Cross-Country Championships. The list of withdrawals is pretty long, but the four races on the schedule are still set to pull in good talent, especially in the senior races where wins can score people without the qualifying standard places in the National Track and Field Championships 10000 m. Click the race distance for entry lists: Senior Men's 10 km, Senior Women's 8 km, U20 men's 8 km, U20 women's 6 km. TBS will be broadcasting the senior races on delay starting at 3:30 p.m. Japan time.

Sunday is the final edition of the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon before it moves back to Osaka next year. The entry list is super deep, with 25 men who've run under 2:10 in the last 3 years and 53 sub-2:12, and at this point the only major withdrawal looks to be Olympic marathon trials winner Shogo Nakamura. Expect Lake Biwa to go out with a bang. NHK will broadcast the entire race ad-free starting at 9:15 a.m. local time. If you've got a VPN you might be able to watch NHK's stream, but we'll be live tweeting the race on @JRNLive and will tweet links to any other streams that turn up.

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