by Brett Larner
Update: Kizaki has withdrawn.
The Nagoya Women's Marathon is one of the Japanese races taking steps to adapt to the mass-participation boom, changing from an elite-only format but still keeping its identity by incorporating a mass field that makes it the largest women-only marathon in the world. At the front end, like last week's Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon for the men Nagoya is the last chance for Japanese women to qualify for the 2015 Beijing World Championships marathon team. While Japanese men's marathoning has grown over the last five years, women's marathoning has been hit by an absence of new top level-names, today's top women running 2:23-2:25 where they would have been 4 minutes faster 10-15 years ago.
But Nagoya has done a great job of pulling together most of the best current women and future hopefuls for some kind of return to past success. In the house are the fastest Japanese woman of 2013-14, Asian Games silver medalist Ryoko Kizak…
Update: Kizaki has withdrawn.
The Nagoya Women's Marathon is one of the Japanese races taking steps to adapt to the mass-participation boom, changing from an elite-only format but still keeping its identity by incorporating a mass field that makes it the largest women-only marathon in the world. At the front end, like last week's Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon for the men Nagoya is the last chance for Japanese women to qualify for the 2015 Beijing World Championships marathon team. While Japanese men's marathoning has grown over the last five years, women's marathoning has been hit by an absence of new top level-names, today's top women running 2:23-2:25 where they would have been 4 minutes faster 10-15 years ago.
But Nagoya has done a great job of pulling together most of the best current women and future hopefuls for some kind of return to past success. In the house are the fastest Japanese woman of 2013-14, Asian Games silver medalist Ryoko Kizak…