Ichiyama ran most of the race in the 3rd pace group, going through halfway in 1:02:44 and 30 km in 1:29:13. When the pacers stopped, he showed what he could really do. "I'm not good at downhills, so in the first part it was hard to run smoothly," he said at the post-race press conference. "But after the downhill part ended I got into my rhythm, and I think that helped me over the 2nd half."
After dropping Asian Games gold medalist Hiroto Inoue (Mitsubishi Juko) and others, he quickly bore down on the Japanese athletes who had gone out faster in the 2nd pace group. Overtaking Paris Olympics 6th placer Akira Akasaki (Kyudenko) and Yuhei Urano (Fujitsu), at 39.8 km he caught all-time Japanese #2 man Yohei Ikeda (Kao). With a 15:03 5 km split from 35 km to 40 km the top Japanese spot was his.
"I was really focused on not getting dropped by the foreign athletes ahead of me, not on catching the other Japanese runners," he said. "I wasn't thinking about time, just not losing my rhythm. I just stayed calm and tenacious. After 30 km I didn't really have the energy to spare on worrying about other things, so that was all I could do."
Ichiyama finished 10th overall in 2:06:00, the 9th-fastest time ever by a Japanese man and 30 seconds under the qualifying standard for September's Tokyo World Championships. A PB by 1 minute and 41 seconds, it put his name on the list of candidates for the Tokyo team. "I thought there was another Japanese runner ahead of me, so I didn't find out that I was the first one to finish until after the race," he said.
But even though he was surprised by the result, he had come to Tokyo full of confidence. "For all my previous marathons I hadn't been able to do everything on the training plan, but this time I did. I knew I was in good shape, and that played a role in my time and placing, especially in how I was able to keep it going over the 2nd half. My goal was to make the Tokyo World Championships team. I don't know if that's going to happen, but if I'm chosen for the team I want to deliver the same kind of performance again."
Runners who take the top spot at the Tokyo Marathon can be considered as at the very top level of the sport in Japan. They usually competed at the national level in high school and excelled at the Hakone Ekiden. Most of them come from the powerhouse corporate teams, where they are considered the elite of the elite and exempted from work duties so they can focus on their training. Ichiyama's career has been different.
Through junior high school he was a basketball player and didn't start running track and field until he went to Omiya Higashi H.S. "In junior high I just ran to get stronger, and I was always the fastest in my class," he said. "In high school I wanted to join the dance club, but a sprinter on the track team told me I had potential in long distance, so it's really all thanks to him." But it took a while for his talent to come out.
Ichiyama got into Chuo Gakuin University through an academic route and was a walk-on for its ekiden team. His 1st year there his 5000 m PB ranked him 3rd from last among the 25 people on the team. From there he ground his way up through the ranks, and his last year he finally made it to CGU's starting roster for the Hakone Ekiden. There he ran the most competitive stage, the 23.1 km Second Stage, where he was 17th, and when he graduated 2 months later he had the fastest half marathon PB on the team.
After graduating he joined the corporate leagues, thinking, "Maybe running can be a job." After short periods at the SID Group and Komori Corporation teams, where he ran a 2:07:41 PB at the 2021 Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon and 2:07:44 for 3rd overall at the 2023 Beppu-Oita Mainchi Marathon, at the time the fastest-ever by a Japanese athlete at Beppu, he transferred to Sunbelx in April, 2023. In October that year he was 13th at the MGC Race Paris Olympics marathon trials.
Ichiyama currently works in the grocery department at the Soka Aoyagi branch of the Belx supermarket chain. From 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday he is responsible for stocking shelves and reordering. After work he trains. Ahead of the Tokyo Marathon he got special permission to slightly reduce his work shifts.
"I don't have any complaints about having to work while running," he says. "There are a lot of people who have to work more than I do, and my co-workers and customers at the supermarket always encourage me. They really give me strength. Sometimes I have to move heavy boxes full of bottled drinks, and if I'm not careful about how I do it I can hurt my back. I try to pay attention to how I'm doing it and squat a bit to use my abs so that it has a strength training role relative to my training."
In this way Ichiyama was gotten where he has by making the most of the environment he has to work with. Despite saying that he hadn't felt good at the time, he won February's National Corporate Half Marathon Championships in 1:00:22, the 8th-fastest Japanese men's time ever. That gave him a lot of confidence heading into the Tokyo Marathon.
In Tokyo he almost caught 5000 m and 10000 m world record holder Joshua Cheptegei (Uganda), missing running him down by just 1 second. He laughs at the idea of being on the cusp of the world's super-elite. "I just want to try to be a role model for other working athlete and amateur runners, " he says. "I care more about putting my heart into that than chasing fast times, and I think that's why I ran so well this time." That context makes what he achieved in Tokyo even cooler.
photo © 2025 Montri Boonyasat/Running Insider, all rights reserved
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translated and edited by Brett Larner
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