Arakawa and Tomizawa Win Ontake 100-Miler, Onodera and Sakai Take Short Course Titles

The OSJ Ontake 100 happened this past weekend, one of Japan's most popular trail ultras. In the 100 km short course race, actually around 109 km, Shingo Nosaka had a 4-minute lead over Yuta Onodera through the first checkpoint at 54 km, splitting 4:26:20 to Onodera's 4:30:39. Running in 3rd and 4th at that point, Ryo Murata and Yuichi Miura were another 4 minutes back, but over the tough 2nd half both dropped out. Nosaka faded too, caught by Onodera before the second checkpoint at 83 km, but he rallied over the last 26 km to close a minute and a half on Onodera's lead. In the end, Onodera won by almost 9 minutes in 9:23:20, Nosaka 2nd in 9:32:16 and Hironori Nomoto running strong over the second half for 3rd in 9:39:59.

In the women's 109 km race, Ethiopian Mulu Seboka, a 2:21:56 runner who was 5th in Chicago 2015 and won Toronto in 2014, led by half an hour at the first checkpoint and sat at 13th overall in 5:05:09. But on a course that rewarded more caution, the middle section of the race proved too much and she dropped out. Chiyuki Mochizuki, a 100 km national team member, was next in 5:34:54 at the first checkpoint but had a lot of trouble on the hilly middle section and dropped to 4th by the end of the race. 3rd at the first checkpoint in 5:40:03, Natsuki Sakai stayed strong when it counted and took the win in 12:17:48, over 8 minutes up on 2nd-placer Yuki Kumori, 12:25:54 with an almost even 1st checkpoint split of 6:05:30. Rieko Ito was 3rd in 12:34:15.

In the main event, the 100 mile long course race, slightly long at 163 km, Jun Arakawa went out hard, up by 16 minutes at the 54 km checkpoint in 5:01:54. Over the next two segments Yuki Tairaku closed to within 25 seconds, but on the final section Arakawa pulled away again to win in 17:36:02 with Tairaku next in 17:45:00. Tsuyoshi Fukuzawa ran very conservatively through the first two segments before attacking the last two, clocking the fastest splits in the field on the 3rd and 4th segments to take 3rd in 17:47:24.

Izumi Tomizawa and Tomomi Hara had a close one in the women's long course, Tomizawa up by 16:55 at the second checkpoint but Hara closing that down to 1:53 by race's end. Tomizawa took the win in 19:36:21 and Hara 2nd in 19:48:24. Veteran Mariko Kirihata was far back in 3rd in 21:33:36.

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