Skip to main content

Heisei Mountaineering Stops Takigahara SDF Base From Scoring 10-Year Streak at Mount Fuji Ekiden


by Koichi Iwasa of DogsorCaravan

On Aug. 2 the 51st Mount Fuji Ekiden took place, starting and finishing in Gotemba, Shizuoka and covering 11 stages up to the peak of Mount Fuji and back down. Teams of 6 runners tackle the tough course, each running handling one uphill and one downhill leg with the 6th runner reaching the peak before turning around to head back to the exchange zone where they started. The Heisei Mountaineering Club team took the overall win in 3:50:39, beating 9-time winner Takigahara SDF Base by 2:07 and stopping them from achieving a 10-year victory streak. The independent team division and SDF team division were separated in 2005, and this was the first time that the winning independent team outran the fastest SDF team to take the overall title.

The roster that Heisei Mountaineering put together for this year's race raised eyebrows among everyone familiar with the Japanese trail running scene. Handling the 5th and 7th legs was Ruy Ueda, winner of the Fuji Mountain Race last week for the 2nd year in a row and a fixture on the international sky running circuit. On the 4th and 8th legs was Yamato Yoshino, the Hasestune Cup champion with World Championships experience on the Japanese national team. A former Hakone Ekiden runner who has moved to trail running the last few years, Hikaru Kitamura was in charge of the 3rd and 9th legs.

Altogether, the Heisei Mountaineering team had road racing speed, mountain running technical skill, and the physiological resilience to perform at altitudes over 3000 m. The demands of the Mount Fuji Ekiden vary dramatically depending on the leg, but Heisei Mountaineering showed supreme skill in assigning athletes who had the credentials to handle exactly what their stages called for. With Takuma Shimizu starting off and anchoring, Kazuki Nitta on the 2nd and 10th legs, and Masato Kamishohara handling the summit stage, the team was finely-tuned for this year's race.

At the same time, in pursuit of a 10th-straight win Takigahara SDF Base made some changes to the running order that had been unbeatable for almost a decade. The biggest change was the move of Toru Miyahara from his longtime position on the 5th and 7th legs to 4th and 8th and the placement of Hiroya Moriguchi to fill Miyahara's usual spots on 5th and 7th. The 5th leg features a tough climb from the Nigo Hachi-shaku station to Nanago Go-shaku station, the longest segment of the ascent part of the race taking about 45 minutes to cover. Moving Miyahara effectively meant taking a proven 5th leg specialist to the shorter, faster 4th leg.

Another change in the Takigahara lineup was on the summit leg. Replacing the team's longtime summit runner Yuya Kawasaki, Hiroya Funamizu was tasked with the crucial stage in his debut in this race. There must have been a decision within the team to start shifting responsibility away from the veterans to the next generation. But there's. no avoiding the fact that these two changes had a big impact on the overall outcome.

Takigahara led by 1:42 at the end of the 4th leg thanks to good runs on the early road legs, but Ueda cut 16 seconds off to put Heisei 1:26 behind at the start of the summit stage. Kamishohara outran Funamizu by almost 3 minutes on the summit stage to put Heisei in the lead by 1:25, and even though Takigahara closed that to 59 seconds over the next 2 stages of wildly steep descent thanks in part to Miyahara running the fastest time on the 4th leg, by the end of the race Heisei had pulled away again to win by 2:07.

It's probably inaccurate to wave off the results this year as just an upset. Careful planning went into Heisei Mountaineering's decisions on who to assign to each stage given the skills they brought to the table. They put the 2-time Fuji Mountain Race winner on the longest ascent, the Hatsetsune champ on the middle part of the race where the gradient changes rapidly, and a Hakone runner on the fastest part of the descent. What was innovative was the way they incorporated both trail and road specialists to play specific roles within the team.

At the same time, Takigahara's decisions had their own logic. Putting Miyahara on 4th was probably a strategic move to make sure they could drop any chase pack if it was still close at the Taboo checkpoint. Giving Moriguchi and Funamizu chances on 5th and 6th was a move that they had to take to be ready for the next decade after almost that long a streak of wins. But the combination of those changes all at once made this year more challenging than they expected. There was just no way to make up the turnaround that happened on the summit leg.

The last few years independent division teams have been bridging the gap to the SDF division step by step. This was the year that they finally got there at the front end of the field. But it's worth looking a little further ahead. If top-tier trail runners like the ones who raced this year are starting to seriously looking at this ekiden as an event worth competing in, the level at the Mount Fuji Ekiden is going to go up even further. 13 teams in the field this year were doing it for the first time. Some of them were put together by former Hakone Ekiden runners, and some had people with national team experience. In its 51st edition this ultimately local race has quietly started becoming a focal point for trail running talent. The results this year give concrete data showing that shift in progress.

51st Mount Fuji Ekiden

Gotemba, Shizuoka, 2 Aug. 2026
104 teams, 11 legs, 48.19 km, 3199 m elevation difference

Top Individual Stage Results
First Stage (6.19 km, 184 m gain)
Shun Furukawa (Nerima 1st Infantry Regiment) - 20:38 (3:20/km)

Second Stage (4.64 km, 345 m gain)
Kosuke Edamura (Mitsugi Club) - 18:50 (4:04/km)

Third Stage (4.54 km, 371 m gain)
Hikaru Kitamura (Heisei Mountaineering Club - 19:23 (4:17/km)

Fourth Stage (2.84 km, 664 m gain)
Toru Miyahara (Takigahara SDF Base) - 25:27 (8:58/km)

Fifth Stage (4.24 km, 1017 m gain)
Ruy Ueda (Heisei Mountaineering Club) - 45:08 (10:39/km)

Sixth Stage (4.92 km, 618 m gain to summit, 618 loss)
Taichi Hayata (Engaru SDF Base) - 40:40 (8:16/km)

Seventh Stage (3.66 km, 1017 m loss)
Tomoki Ito (Sapporo 18th Infantry Regiment) - 8:14 (2:15/km)

Eighth Stage (2.59 km, 664 m loss)
Naoki Takigawa (Takada SDF Base) - 6:42 (2:36/km)

Ninth Stage (4.44 km, 371 m loss)
Tomoharu Yamashita (Smash Elite) - 11:18 (2:33/km)

Tenth Stage (4.64 km, 345 loss)
Ryota Matsui (Team Kibidango) - 12:01 (2:36/km)

Eleventh Stage (5.49 km, 184 m loss)
Shun Furukawa (Nerima 1st Infantry Regiment) - 15:25 (2:49/km)

Top Team Results
1. Heisei Mountaineering Club - 3:50:39
2. Takigahara SDF Base - 3:52:46
3. Rumoi SDF Base - 3:57:49
4. 1st Airborne Brigade - 3:58:31
5. Team Chibidango - 3:58:57
6. SC Tanzawa Hatano - 4:02:43
7. Nerima 1st Infantry Regiment - 4:03:51
8. Toyota Sportsman Club - 4:04:05
9. Takada SDF Base - 4:05:22
10. Engaru SDF Base - 4:09:03


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

'CAS Clears Japan’s Olympic Silver Medallist Ikeda of Doping, Overturns Ban'

https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/10/23/cas-clears-japans-olympic-silver-medallist-ikeda-of-doping-overturns-ban The AIU's missteps in this case cost Tokyo Olympics and Oregon World Championships 20 km race walk silver medalist Koki Ikeda , a Toyo University graduate who competes for the Asahi Kasei corporate team, the chance to represent Japan at a home soil World Championships last year. It is almost unheard of for an athlete to successfully fight a biological passport suspension as Ikeda did, making this a highly significant case. The CAS' press release about its decision stated: "The Panel stressed that the Athlete did not merely assert his position on the ABP abnormalities but adduced very extensive evidence in support of his explanations. In this highly complex case, the evidence brought during the CAS proceedings was far more abundant and specific than during the first instance proceedings with the WA Disciplinary Tribunal, implying the CAS Panel had further ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meijo Back With Morinomiyako Ekiden CR for National University Title

The last big dynasty school in Japanese women's distance running with 7-straight wins at October's Morinomiyako Ekiden from 2017 to 2023 and 6-straight titles at the season-ending Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden from 2018 to 2023, Meijo University came back from a 3rd-place finish last year to win the 44th Morinomiyako Ekiden again, leading almost start-to-finish to set a 2:02:21 CR for the 6-stage, 38.0 km course in Sendai. 12 second back in 2nd after the opening leg, collegiate 3000 mSC champ Nozomi Kondo put Meijo out front with a 12:36 CR for the 4.0 km Second Stage, and the rest of the team never looked back. The biggest threat to a Meijo win was on the 9.2 m Fifth Stage, where this year's collegiate 10000 m winner Sarah Wanjiru from last year's runner-up Daito Bunka University started 50 seconds back from Meijo 1st-year Mao Kimura . In taking the 10000 m title Wanjiru had outrun Kimura by over a minute, but today Kimura was a revelation, strong and smooth out fr...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more