Weekend Preview - Nagoya and the National University Half

Looking at what's coming up Sunday it kind of almost sort of feels like things are starting to get back toward normalish. Down to the south you've got the Nagoya Women's Marathon stepping up as the first WA Platinum Label Race worldwide to go ahead with a combined elite and mass-participation race since the pandemic started. It's a much smaller field than usual with just 5,000 in the mass-participation race plus elites, but they're actually going to do it. Can you believe it? We're still having a hard time.

The elite race should be good, even with the withdrawal of Tokyo Olympics marathon team member Ayuko Suzuki (Japan Post) with another injury. You've still got Olympic team alternate Rei Ohara (Tenmaya), last year's Osaka International winner Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) and 25 km national record co-holder Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku), with Matsuda kicking around the possibility of a new NR. That sounds pretty good. There's even a chance of a new world record, with 62-year-old Mariko Yugeta trying to better the 2:52:13 60+ WR she set in Osaka in January.

Detailed entry lists can be had here. Fuji TV will be broadcasting Nagoya live starting at 9:00 a.m. Sunday local time, and we'll be covering the race @JRNLive. Streaming? Something will pop up. We'll tweet links when it does.

Making things seem even more almost normal, that's not even the only big road race happening Sunday. Both the men's and women's National University Half Marathon Championships will be on in Tokyo's western Tachikawa suburb on the same course around an air force base runway used for last fall's Hakone Ekiden qualifier. There won't be any kind of broadcast or streaming, which is a real shame because the men's race looks incredible.

Limited to collegiate runners who've gone sub-1:04 for the half or sub-29:10 for 10000 m on the track, it still has 204 entrants plus a couple dozen more high-potential people who haven't hit the qualifying standards. A lot won't show, but big names on the entry list include last year's #1 collegiate half marathoner Shoya Kawase (Kogakkan Univ.), 1:01:18, in his final race before joining the Honda corporate team, sub-28 runners Charles Kamau Wanjiku (Mushashino Univ.), James Bunuka (Surugadai Univ.), Ren Tazawa (Komazawa Univ.), Yuhi Nakaya (Waseda Univ.) and Naoki Ota (Waseda Univ.), and a whole lot of others you probably saw at Hakone.

Usually held in Matsue on the west coast, the women's race is a lot smaller with just 89 entrants total but still has good quality. 2019 World University Games half marathon gold medalist Yuka Suzuki (Daito Bunka Univ.) and bronze medalist Yuki Tagawa (Matsuyama Univ.) lead the way, with competition from National University Women's Ekiden champion Meijo University teammates Narumi Kobayashi and Yuka Masubuchi. Both the women's and men's races count toward national team selection for the 2021 Chengdu World University Games team, assuming the Games go ahead. Whether or not they do, at least these races are.

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...

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