Skip to main content

Ichida, Kikuchi Tsutsui and Yamaguchi Racing Overseas This Weekend

Four noteworthy Japanese marathoners are racing overseas this weekend, all with goals centered on October's MGC Race Olympic marathon trials. Sunday at the Rotterdam Marathon, Takashi Ichida (Asahi Kasei) and Shunya Kikuchi (Chugoku Denryoku) will try to become the 63rd and 64th  Japanese men to qualify for the MGC Race. Kikuchi ran 2:08:20 at the Osaka Marathon at the end of February, making him the 2nd-fastest Japanese man not to have qualified yet. He has a relatively low bar of 2:11:40 to clear in Rotterdam in order to hit the two-race 2:10:00 qualifying criteria. With a 2:09:15 PB at February's Beppu-Oita Marathon Ichida needs to run 2:10:45 in Rotterdam, giving him a bit less of a margin of error. With his wife Misaki Nishida (Edion) having made the MGC cut at the Osaka Marathon later in February, Ichida getting there in Rotterdam would make them the second married couple to qualify following men's NR holder Kengo Suzuki (Fujitsu) and women-only NR holder Mao Ichiyama (Shiseido).

Also in Rotterdam for MGC qualification is Sakiho Tsutsui (Yamada Holdings). Tsutsui ran a 2:28:45 PB in Nagoya on March 12 and just five weeks later needs a new PB of 2:27:15 to become the 30th Japanese woman to make the trials. 


Along with Nishida and Ichiyama one of the 29 women to have qualified for the MGC Race six weeks out from the deadline, Haruka Yamaguchi (AC Kita) is running Monday's Boston Marathon with support from JRN. Yamaguchi had originally planned to focus on improving her 2:26:35 PB, the second-slowest in the MGC field, this season, but given the chance to run Boston decided that a non-paced race on a technical course would be better prep for similar race circumstances at the MGC and, if she were to make top 2 there, Paris next year. Her goal is to at least match her 2:29:52 winning time at last summer's Hokkaido Marathon.

Ichida photo © 2018 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Yamaguchi photo c/o Haruka Yamaguchi
text © 2023 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

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...
8 comments
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more