Weekend Track and Road Roundup

The Gifu Seiryu Half Marathon aside, a quick roundup of results from this past weekend:

At the Nittai University Time Trials, aka the Nittaidai Challenge Games, Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) led a great men's 10000 m A-heat in 27:20.05, with the top six men all going under 27:28. James Mutuku (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) was the only other collegiate runner among them at 3rd in 27:23.09, with 2:06 marathoner Hidekazu Hijikata (Asahi Kasei) the top Japanese finisher at 8th in 28:23.27.

Mutuku's YGU teammate Brian Kipyegon won the 5000 m A-heat in 13:30.88, James Karuri (Aomori Yamada H.S.) next in 13:33.67 and Kaisei Okada (Chuo Univ.) 3rd in 13:48.44. Soya Katayama (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) had the fastest 1500 m with a 3:46.19 to win the A-heat.

In the women's races at Nittai, Tabitha Njeri Kamau (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) was the only one to clear 16 minutes in the 5000 m A-heat, running 15:27.12 for the win. Lucy Nduta (Aomori Yamada H.S.) was likewise the only one under 9 minutes in the 3000 m A-heat at 8:57.59, Runa Shoji (Kantaiheiyo Univ.) taking the 1500 m A-heat in 4:19.30 by 0.12 over Yuma Yamamoto (Sekisui Kagaku). Yamamoto was also 2nd behind Nduta in the 3000 m, running 9:08.38.

Like last year, heavy rain hit Hiroshima's Oda Memorial Meet on Monday, but there were still a lot of good performances. Shunsuke Yoshii (Chuo Univ.) led the top six under 13:30 in the men's 5000 m A-heat in 13:24.06, with Taishi Ito (Waseda Univ.) running in the 13:20s for the first time at 13:28.67 for 5th.

Just-graduated 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura (Subaru) and perpetual rival Philemon Kiplagat (Aisan Kogyo) both went under Kiplagat's meet record from 2021, Miura winning in 8:22.07 and Kiplagat 2nd in 8:23.35. On the way up this season, Yutaro Niinae (Aisan Kogyo) was 3rd in 8:28.54, his first time under 8:30. Three men broke the MR in the 1500 m, all under 3:40, led by Abraham Guem (Ami AC) in 3:39.17. Ryoji Tatezawa (DeNA) was 2nd in 3:39.55 and Masato Saiki (Fujisan no Meisui) 3rd in 3:39.88.

Agnes Mwikali (Kyocera) was less than a second off the MR in the women's 5000 m, winning by over 20 seconds in 15:04.71. Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) was 2nd in 15:25.30, with Ireland's Jodie McCann 4th in a PB 15:30.20. Tomoka Kimura (Sekisui Kagaku) shaved 0.19 off the women's 1500 m MR dating way back to 1994, winning 4:10.75 over Rose Wangui (Sera H.S.), 2nd in 4:12.85. Overseas, NR holder Nozomi Tanaka (New Balance) was slightly faster at the Penn Relays, running 4:08.32 for 3rd.

Also overseas, a massive crew of nine Adidas-sponsored Japanese men ran the 5 km at the adizero Road to Records in Germany, where they duly filled up the back half of the field, jogging in a pack and finishing 15th through 22nd and 24th of 24. Kosei Atomura (Koku Gakuin Univ.) was the only one to run relatively seriously, clocking 14:00 for 15th. The 16th through 21st-placers all ran between 14:30 and 14:38, 14:38 being the time run by women's winner Medina Eisa.

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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