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Weekend Road and Track Roundup


A roundup of the main road and track action on the last weekend of Japan's 2024-25 academic and fiscal year:
  • Doubling off a 2:07:06 PB at the Tokyo Marathon 4 weeks ago, Tatsuya Maruyama took bronze at the Asian Marathon Championships in Jiaxing, China in 2:11:56. Gold went to North Korea's Il Ryong Han in a breakaway 2:11:18, with silver medalist Tianyu Chen of China just ahead of Maruyama in 2:11:50. Japan's Shungo Yokota was a distant 4th in 2:14:00, with Japan-based Mongolian NR holder Ser-Od Bat-Ochir 6th in 2:15:14. Japanese women Kaede Kawamura and Natsumi Matsushita were 5th and 6th in 2:31:26 and 2:34:40, with medals going to China's Bing Wu, gold in 2:26:01, North Korea's Kwang-Ok Ri, silver right behind her in 2:26:07, and defending gold medalist Khishigsaikhan Galbadrakh landing in bronze this time in 2:28:56, her third sub-2:29 performance so far in 2025.
  • Back home, four men broke 2:20 at the Fukui Sakura Marathon. Ko Kobayashi from the Shindengen Kogyo corporate team got the win in 2:16:37 by nearly a minute over club runner Natsuki Ishibe. The women's race saw Yukie Nagata get the win by just 17 seconds over Momoko Yao, 2:40:31 to 2:40:48. The top 7 women were all under 2:47, pretty good depth for a 3rd-tier Japanese marathon.
  • On the track, Australia's Maurie Plant Meet was the main event. In his last race before joining Waseda University on April 1, Rui Suzuki ran 13:25.59 for 6th in the 5000 m, the 2nd-fastest Japanese high school mark and 3rd-fastest U20 time ever. Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University's Masaya Tsurukawa was 9th in 13:26.23, with Shunsuke Yoshii, Tetsu Sasaki and Tomonori Yamaguchi unremarkable in 13:55.79, 13:59.73 and 14:06.17. Ryoji Tatezawa was last by 5 seconds in the men's 1500 m in 3:48.24. Yudai Nishi and Koki Ueyama were only 6th and 7th in the men's 200 m in 21.00 and 21.01. In women's track events, Nagisa Shimotabira was 13th of 14 in the 3000 m in 9:07.01, while Tomoka Kimura and Yume Goto took the bottom two places in the 1500 m in 4:19.97 and 4:31.21. Like Tatezawa, Kimura was 5 seconds behind the closest finisher ahead of her. At the other end of the spectrum, Japanese women took the top 3 places in the 100 mH, Yumi Tanaka getting the win in 13.11 over Chisato Kiyoyama and Hitomi Nakajima.
  • On the field at Maurie Plant, Tomohiro Shinno won the high jump in a middling 2.20 m, with last year's 3rd-place Naoto Hasegawa 5th at 2.16 m and Takashi Eto ;6th at only 2.12 m. Yuki Yamashita was 4th in the triple jump at 15.67 m (-1.8). Yuji Tsutsumi was last in the men's discus throw at 53.62 m, the only athlete not to throw over 54 m. Nagisa Takahashi was a decent 2nd in the women's high jump after clearing 1.86 m. Momone Ueda and Sae Takemoto went 4-5 in the women's javelin throw at 57.65 m and 56.91 m.
  • With the 10000 m National Championships coming up in 2 weeks most of the big names gave The TEN a miss this year. Kenta Sekiguchi ran the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, 28:07.46 for 5th in the B-heat, with Shotaro Ishihara 9th in 28:14.50. No Japanese women raced.
  • In Yokohama, the Nittai University Time Trials series kicked off its 2025-26 run even though it was still technically 2024-25. Takuma Akiyoshi from the University of Tokyo had the fastest men's 10000 m at Nittai in 28:45.62, one of 6 men there to break 29 minutes. Juntendo University's Riito Ikema had the fastest 5000 m in 13:36.26, less than half a second ahead of Honda's Nanami Arai. Men's times in the 3000 m, 1500 m and 800 m were unremarkable.
  • The biggest women's mark went to Nittai's own Miu Saito, who moved up to all-time Japanese #6 in the 3000 m steeplechase and #2 on the collegiate list with a 9:41.57 PB for the win. Corporate leaguer Janet Nyiva edged high schooler Lucy Nduta by 0.35 seconds to win the 5000 m in 15:28.45, with the unattached Sora Shinozakura taking the 3000 m in 9:11.44 after recently quitting the Panasonic corporate team, and Maki Izumida outleaning Kadogo Chebotibin to win the 1500 m in 4:22.36. Saito's Nittai teammate Miko Suzuki won the women's 800 m in 2:13.57.
© 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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Anonymous said…
While HS results need to carry over to the college programs (and we have had some notable top guys not improving from their HS school days) it's encouraging to see Rui Suzuki running that PB and joining Waseda.
They alread had a strong young line-up at Hakone and it's good for the movement to have them loading up together with other teams to try and challenge AGU/Komazawa.

Ikema's PB is big for Juntendo as well, Yoshioka didn't develop the way he was supposed to but he's still a good runner they can count on.
They have a couple of other guys developing similarly to Ikema and I think they should have way less problems at Yosenkai compared to last year.

April 3, 2025 at 1:21 AM
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