japan running news

  Following Aoyama Gakuin University 's scoring its second Hakone Ekiden threepeat , 4th-year Asahi Kuroda  was awarded Hakone's MVP and Kanakuri Cup. The MVP award goes to the runner who made the biggest individual contribution to the winning team's success, with the Kanakuri Cup going to the outstanding overall individual performance of the race, as decided by a vote among coaches of the teams at this year's race. On the first day of the Hakone Ekiden on Jan. 2, Kuroda set a new CR of 1:07:16 on the 20.8 km Fifth Stage, which rises from near sea level to a peak elevation of 874 m before dropping to finish at 731 m. His incredible time took 1:55 off the 1:09:11 CR set just a year earlier by his former Aoyama Gakuin teammate Hiroki Wakabayashi  and catapulted Aoyama Gakuin from 5th place into the lead, breaking its own Day One CR and setting it up to front run the second day to the overall win. "I've never gotten the MVP award before, and that was one thing I ...

It was another record-breaking year at the Hakone Ekiden . All 13 of the course records, the 10 individual stages, the Day One and Day Two courses and the overall course, have been set since 2019, and out of those 6 fell this time, 2 of them broken by multiple athletes or teams. All of them had performances in at least their all-time top 6, and 9 of them in their all-time top 3. First Stage (21.3 km) - all-time #4 Second Stage (23.1 km) - CR, all-time #2, all-time #3, all-time #9 Third Stage (21.4 km) - all-time #4, all-time #5, all-time #7 Fourth Stage (20.9 km) - all-time #2, all-time #7, all-time #8, all-time #9 Fifth Stage (20.8 km uphill) - CR, all-time #3 Sixth Stage (20.8 km downhill) - CR, all-time #5, all-time #9 Seventh Stage (21.3 km) - CR, all-time #4 (x2), all-time #7 Eighth Stage (21.4 km) - all-time #6, all-time #9, all-time #10 Ninth Stage (23.1 km) - all-time #6, all-time #10 Tenth Stage (23.0 km) - all-time #2, all-time #7 Day One (107.5 km) - all-time #2...

  At the closing ceremony of the 101st Hakone Ekiden on Jan. 3 at the Yomiuri Newspaper building in Otemachi, Tokyo, Akimu Nomura was named MVP of this year's race for his role in helping Aoyama Gakuin University score it 2nd-straight course record win. Nomura became the first runner ever to break 57 minutes on the 20.8 km downhill Sixth Stage, setting a new CR of 56:47, and was also awarded the Shizo Kanakuri award for exceptional performance and potential. The MVP award is new this year and goes to the outstanding member of the winning team, while the Kanakuri award has been in place since the 80th edition in 2004. The winners of both awards were determined by the KGRR selection committee led by Yasushi Ueda . Nomura told media, "To be honest I didn't think they'd give me both. I would have been happy with either, so I'm really, really happy. When the team started training in April after the 100th last year I said I was going to go for 56 minutes, but it seeme...

2024 Hakone Ekiden course record breaker Aoyama Gakuin University was 3:16 up on 2023 winner Komazawa University at the end of Day One of the Hakone 2025, an even bigger margin than last year when it was 2:38 ahead of Komazawa and went on to win the 217.1 km overall race in a course record 10:41:25, beating Komazawa by almost 7 minutes. There was almost no chance Komazawa could close the gap today on the return trip of Hakone Day Two. But that doesn't mean they didn't try. Komazawa 3rd year Aoi Ito was just off the CR on the ~800 m downhill 6th leg in 57:38, but even with a run that good he lost ground when AGU's Akimu Nomura proved a hypothetical, breaking the 57-minute barrier for the 20.8 km leg with a 30-second CR of 56:47. Post-race Nomura said that he had spent the whole year training to run 56, and he executed perfectly. And put AGU 4:07 ahead, hopeless, except for a ray of hope. Injured for most of 2024 and running his first race since March on only 6 weeks of...

The biggest road race of the year is days away, with the Hakone Ekiden entering its second century on Jan. 2 and 3. 20 university teams and one select team race 217.1 km in 10 legs from central Tokyo to the mountains near Mt. Fuji and back, with Nippon TV broadcasting the whole thing live and nationwide to an audience in the tens of millions. TVer is streaming Day One here starting at 7:50 a.m. local time on Jan. 2, and Day Two here at 7:50 a.m. again. If you've got a VPN you should be good to go. JRN will be on-site at the Day One finish line and Day Two start line and will be doing some coverage on @JRNLive . At October's Izumo Ekiden and November's National University Ekiden Koku Gakuin University , Komazawa University and Aoyama Gakuin University went 1-2-3, and the main question at Hakone is whether it'll be the same order again. Komazawa is the heavyweight legacy school of the three, with 8 wins and 18 top 3 finishes at Hakone in the last 25 years under ex...

A new event bringing together top high school, college, corporate league and club men's teams, the Okukuma Ekiden was held for the first time Sunday in Kumamoto. 42.195 km split into 7 stages for the high school boys' division and 4 stages for the others, the race saw Nagano's Saku Chosei H.S. become the first team across its finish line in 2:07:16. The Toyota Kyushu corporate team was 2nd overall in 2:07:32, with local Kyushu Gakuin H.S. 3rd in 2:07:52. The new ekiden, which mirrors the format of the Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden, was originally scheduled to have taken place in 2020. But after two years of pandemic-era cancelations, the inaugural running didn't take place until this year. It was an impressive success. The high school boys' stage lengths were almost the same as those at December's National High School Ekiden, 10 km, 3 km, 8.25 km, 7.9 km, 3 km, 5 km, and 5.045 km. Other divisions ran stages 10 km, 11.25 km, 10.9 km, and 10.045 ...

As we saw with multiple national records at last Friday's long distance National Championships , the Japanese distance world keeps getting faster and faster. High school athletes are no exception. Breaking 14 minutes for 5000 m is the gold standard for a top-level high school runner. This season 22 boys have done it not including foreign student athletes, almost double the previous record for a single season, 12 in 2010. In 2010, Kenta Murayama , now part of the Asahi Kasei corporate team but then running for Miyagi's Meisei H.S., was the fastest high schooler at 13:49.45. Future Tokyo Olympics marathon trials winner Shogo Nakamura ran 13:50.38 that year while at Iga Hakuho H.S. Since then the number of boys under 14 minutes has held steady, with 10 in 2015, 10 in 2016 and 11 in 2019, showing how exceptional this season's number is. Leading this new generation is Tokyo Nogyo Daini H.S. 3rd-year Kosuke Ishida . While at Fukuoka's Asakawa J.H.S. Ishida ran 3:49.72 for 1...

The 281st Nittai University Time Trial s in suburban Yokohama were the biggest track action of the weekend. In Saturday's men's 10000 m A-heat, Hitachi Butsuryu teammates Richard Kimunyan Yator and Jonathan Ndiku went head to head in hopes of showing their coach who's in better shape to run the international stage at the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden. With the thousands of dollars in income that can mean to whoever gets picked on the line, Kimunyan, who set a PB and MR of 27:01.42 in winning September's National Corporate Championships, and Ndiku, who ran a PB 27:07.29 to win September's Tokai University Time Trials, went right to the end. Kimunyan got there first in 27:01.74, Ndiku less than a step behind in a PB 27:01.95. Good luck to their coach in picking who to go with for January's main event. A lap back, 18-year-old Chuo University first-year Yamato Yoshii added to this season's U20 Japanese national record 13:28.31 for 5000 m and Asian U20 half marat...