Championship Ekiden Qualification Weekend

Championship ekiden season is on the way, and this weekend two of the main events will hold their official qualification races.

Saturday in Tokyo's western suburb of Tachikawa is the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai half marathon, a chance for collegiate men to be on the starting line of the world's #1 race this coming January. 10 universities are already qualified for the Hakone Ekiden by having finished in the top 10 at this year's race, and at the Yosenkai another 10 will join them. 41 universities from the greater Tokyo area will run from 10 to 12 men each and are scored on the total time of their first 10 finishers. The fastest 10 teams go on to Hakone, pure and simple. Top individuals from teams that don't qualify will also be named to a select team, as long as they're Japanese citizens, to fill out Hakone's field of 21. NTV will broadcast the race and its tense qualifier announcement ceremony live starting at 9:25 a.m. Saturday local time, with official streaming on TVer for those in-country.

Meiji University is ranked at the top of the field, a Hakone regular knocked out of the seeded top 10 this year by last year's Yosenkai winner Juntendo University. 2020 Yosenkai runner-up Chuo University is Meiji's toughest competition for the team win, but what really matters is just making the top 10. Kanagawa University, Nittai University, Takushoku University and Josai University look pretty secure to pull that off, but beyond that it gets interesting. Hosei University and Kokushikan University are in the grey zone of Hakone regulars vulnerable to programs trying to get back into elite status like Yamanashi Gakuin University and Senshu University, ones perpetually on the cusp like Tsukuba University and Reitaku University, and up-and-coming programs like Surugadai University and Keio University. Chuo Gakuin University throws an additional variable at the equation, a perpetual Hakone qualifier that somehow blew last year's Yosenkai and didn't make the cut.

Sunday in rural Fukuoka is the Princess Ekiden, the qualifying race for November's corporate women's national championship Queens Ekiden. 31 teams will race 42.195 km in 6 stages in pursuit of a place in the top 20. The ones that make it will join the top 8 from last year's Queens Ekiden at next month's national championship. TBS has the live broadcast starting at 11:50 a.m. Sunday local time, with multi-channel streaming on Youtube. JRN will cover the race live on @JRNLive.

Daihatsu leads the field, missing 8th place at Queens last year by just 9 seconds. Edion, Tenmaya and Shiseido were all just seconds behind, making it a close race up front. But like at the Yosenkai, this is a qualifying race and what matters most is getting into the qualifying bracket. Down around the 15th to 25th-ranked level you've got a mix of traditionally minor teams like Nitori, Shimamura and Toto, fallen greats like former national champ Daiichi Seimei, and new teams like SID Group. At the collegiate level making nationals can impact a coach's career, but at the corporate level it can make the difference to a team's existence the next season. Amid a post-Olympic pullback and the ongoing economic impact of the pandemic, this year that's truer than ever.

19-Yr-Old Munakata Breaks Miura's U20 NR to Win Ageo City Half Marathon

The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin

Ageo City Half Marathon Preview and Streaming

This weekend's big race is the Ageo City Half Marathon , the next stop on the collegiate men's circuit. Most of the universities bound for the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden use Ageo to thin down the list of contenders for their final Hakone rosters, and with JRN's development program that sends the first two Japanese collegiate finishers in Ageo to the United Airlines NYC Half every year a lot of coaches put in some of their A-listers too. That gives Ageo legendary depth and fast front-end speed, with a 1:00:47 course record last year from Kenyan corporate leaguer Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon) and the top 26 all clearing 63 minutes. Since a lot of programs just enter everybody on their rosters you never really know who on the entry list is actually going to show up, but if even a quarter of the people at the top end of this year's list run it'll be a great race, even if conditions are looking likely to be a bit warmer than ideal. Chuo Gakuin University 's Reishi Yoshi

10000 m NR Attempt In the Works Saturday at Hachioji Long Distance - Streaming and Preview

There are a bunch of other time trial meets this weekend and next, but Saturday's Hachioji Long Distance is the last big meet for Japanese men, 8 heats of Wavelight-paced 10000 m finely graded from target times of 28:50 down to 26:59 for the fastest heat. Heat 6 at 17:55 local time is effectively the B-race, with 35 Japan-based Kenyans targeting 27:10 at the front end, and in a lot of cases a spot on their teams at the New Year Ekiden national championship on Jan. 1. Corporate teams are only allowed to field one non-Japanese athlete in the New Year Ekiden, and only on its shortest stage, and getting to that has a big impact on African athletes' contracts and renewal prospects. Toyota Boshoku , Yasukawa Denki , Chugoku Denryoku , Aisan Kogyo , JR Higashi Nihon , Subaru and 2024 national champion Toyota are all fielding two Kenyans, and Aichi Seiko three. For people like Toyota's Felix Korir and Samuel Kibathi , getting as close to the 27:10 target time as they can and

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