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Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon Elite Field


The Feb. 1 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon is coming in hot this year with what's got to be a shot at the 2:04:55 Japanese NR. Up front is the king of this year's Hakone Ekiden, collegiate marathon NR holder Asahi Kuroda of 2026 Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University. Last year at Beppu-Oita AGU's Hiroki Wakabayashi ran a 2:06:07 debut to break the collegiate marathon record. 3 weeks later Kuroda bettered that with a 2:06:05 in his debut in Osaka. He comes in fresh off the greatest run in Hakone history, taking 2 minutes off the CR for the massive uphill Fifth Stage in a run that Letsrun.com estimated was worth a 57:30-58:00 half marathon. Make of that what you will, if you accept 58:00 that's worth sub-2:02 in the marathon. Call it 59:00 and you're still talking sub-2:04. Can he possibly live up to the hype?

Beppu-Oita is basically not that kind of race, but looking at the rest of the front end of the field they've got to be thinking that way. 2:04:22 Kenyan Ronald Korir, Fukuoka International Marathon CR holder at 2:05:16 and AGU grad Yuya Yoshida, and multiple 2:06 runner, even pre-carbon shoes, Hiroto Inoue. Add the cream of the debuting people, sub-61 half marathoners Toru Kubota and Daiki Hattori, and 3 other members of AGU's 2026 Hakone roster, Shota Shiode, Kyosuke Hiramatsu and Shunya Udagawa, and it's going to be great.

There are a ton of others in the 2:06 to 2:09 range and debuting off 61-minute half marathons or 27-minute 10000 m times, and they'll pretty much all be going for qualification for the L.A. Olympic marathon trials to be held in the fall of 2027, because it's never too early to obsess over that. Basically they have to be in the top 6 Japanese finishers and sub-2:09:00, or sub-2:06:30. A 2:03:59 would let them bypass the trials altogether and score a place on the L.A. team, assuming nobody else beats their time before then. That wouldn't have seemed realistic pre-Hakone, but what's stopping Kuroda here? Gravity didn't at Hakone.

Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon Elite Field Highlights

Beppu, Oita, 1 Feb. 2026
times listed are athletes' best in last 3 years except where noted

Ronald Korir (Kenya) - 2:04:22 (Berlin 2023)
Yuya Yoshida (GMO) - 2:05:16 (Fukuoka Int'l 2024)
Asahi Kuroda (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 2:06:05 (Osaka 2025)
Hiroto Inoue (Mitsubishi Juko) - 2:06:14 (Tokyo 2025)
Mohamed Reda El Aaraby (Morocco) - 2:06:45 (Seville 2025)
Getachew Masresha (Ethiopia) - 2:07:04 (Dubai 2025)
Kento Kikutani (Toyota Boshoku) - 2:07:53 (Osaka 2025)
Takeru Yamaguchi (Suzuki) - 2:07:58 (Osaka 2023)
Mizuki Higashi (Aisan Kogyo) - 2:08:03 (Osaka 2024)
Taiyo Iwasaki (JFE Steel) - 2:08:25 (Osaka 2025)
Abe Gashahun (Ethiopia) - 2:08:35 (Riadh 2025)
Takashi Ichida (Asahi Kasei) - 2:08:57 (Chicago 2023)
Keijiro Mogi (Asahi Kasei) - 2:09:06 (Beppu-Oita 2025)
Kiyoshi Koga (Yasukawa Denki) - 2:09:22 (Gold Coast 2024)
Yota Ifuku (Sumitomo Denko) - 2:09:26 (Nobeoka 2024)
Yuma Hattori (Toyota) - 2:09:47 (Osaka 2023)
Asuka Tanaka (Runlife) - 2:10:02 (Fukuoka Int'l 2025)
Chihiro Ono (GMO) - 2:10:15 (Osaka 2023)
Hiroshi Ichida (Logisteed) - 2:10:21 (Tokyo 2025)
Wataru Tochigi (Hiramatsu Byoin) - 2:10:28 (Gold Coast 2025)
Ryoma Inoue (Chudenko) - 2:10:32 (Nobeoka 2025)
Sota Fukutani (Kurosaki Harima) - 2:10:46 (Osaka 2025)
Takanori Ogata (Toyota Kyushu) - 2:10:47 (Beppu-Oita 2024)
Takuma Takemura (SG Holdings) - 2:10:59 (Nobeoka 2025)

Debut
Toru Kubota (Honda) - 1:00:49 (Nat'l Corp. Half 2025)
Daiki Hattori (Toyota Boshoku) - 1:00:49 (Nat'l Corp. Half 2024)
Shota Nishimura (Aichi Seiko) - 1:01:08 (Nat'l Corp. Half 2025)
Hinata Shirakawa (Chuo Univ.) - 1:01:34 (Ageo City Half 2025)
Yuta Nakagawa (M&A BP) - 1:01:40 (Marugame Half 2025)
Shota Shiode (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:01:54 (Marugame Half 2024)
Kyosuke Hiramatsu (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:02:04 (Setagaya 246 Half 2025)
Kotaro Ito (Waseda Univ.) - 1:02:14 (Ageo City Half 2025)
Shunya Udagawa (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:02:20 (Kanagawa Half 2025)
Itta Tameike (Chuo Univ.) - 27:52.38 (Abashiri 2024)
Tomoki Aramaki (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 28:37.51

© 2026 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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