japan running news

The 40th National Women's Ekiden took place Jan. 16, starting and finishing at Kyoto's Takebishi Stadium and covering 42.195 km in 9 stages. The race having been canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 winner Kyoto took the top spot again in 2:15:05 to strengthen its position as the winningest team in event history with 18 national titles. Fukuoka scored 2nd, with Miyagi taking 3rd. Following up on her superb 31:28 CR on the National Corporate Women's Ekiden 's 10.0 km Fifth Stage in November, Shiseido corporate runner Rino Goshima put the Ishikawa prefecture team out front on the 6.0 km opening leg, beating members of the Tokyo Olympic team and finishing in 18:41, just 2 seconds behind the CR held by 5000 m NR holder Ririka Hironaka . Kyoto's Sakiho Tsutsui was only 9th, but over the next three stages the team worked its way toward the front of the field along with Fukuoka and Miyagi. On the race's Eighth Stage, 3.0 km reserved for juni...

The JAAF has announced that due to the rapid increase in coronavirus infections in Hiroshima, the National Men's Ekiden scheduled to take place there on Jan. 23 has been canceled. It is the second year in a row for the event to be canceled because of the pandemic. The National Men's Ekiden starts and finishes at Hiroshima's Peace Park, with teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures made up of 7 athletes ranging from junior high school students to top pros covering a 48.0 km course through the city and neighboring Hatsukaichi. Including coaches and team staff, roughly 600 people from across the country had been scheduled to take part. Athletes entered this year represented the best of multiple generations, including 6 members of the Tokyo Olympic team , 9 members of Aoyama Gakuin University 's 2022 Hakone Ekiden champion team, and many of the top people from December's National High School Ekiden . But since the start of the new year COVID-19 infections have s...

On Sept. 9 the JAAF announced that January's National Women's Ekiden Championships and National Men's Ekiden Championships have been canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. Officials cited the events' unique format, which brings together top junior high school, high school, university and pro athletes on teams representing each prefecture, as the key factor in the decision, saying that it made countermeasures difficult and increased the potential impact were someone to get infected. JAAF executive Mitsugi Ogata commented, "These events allow athletes to run for their home prefectures. If, for example, one university had five athletes in the race, they would each return to the prefecture they were from. This would immediately elevate the risk of widespread exposure. Under the current circumstances of the coronavirus crisis, what makes these races special is precisely what makes them too risky." The 39th National Women's Ekiden Championships...

Tokyo Olympics marathon team member Ayuko Suzuki leads the Aichi prefecture team to the win at the 2016 National Women's Ekiden.

Hitomi Niiya  won January's Aramco Houston Half Marathon in 1:06:38, the fastest time ever by a woman born outside Kenya or Ethiopia at that point and a new Japanese national record. Over the last three days her coach Masato Yokota  has published her complete training diary for the three and a half months leading up to Houston. This is part three. Read part one here and part two here . Yokota will answer any questions about Niiya's training left in the comments, so feel free. Thanks for coming back three days in a row. This is the third and final day. It covers December and January's training. You'll be able to see the final approach and sharpening phase. Speaking of which, the only training camp Niiya went on from October on was a week in Okinawa in December. The rest of her training was all done from home in the Tokyo suburbs. Please do not reproduce this info without permission. You're more than welcome to give these workouts a go (although I can't ...

Bringing together everyone from the top junior high school runners to the pros, the National Women's Ekiden took place in Kyoto on Jan. 12. Hosts Kyoto outran Miyagi and Tokyo to win the national title for the 17th time, extending its lead as the winningest team in the National Women's Ekiden 38-year history. The race started and finished at Kyoto's Takebishi Stadium, covering the full marathon distance in nine stages. Teams from all 47 prefectures competed for the national title. On the First Stage, Nagasaki 's Ririka Hironaka , who last month cleared the Tokyo Olympics 5000 m qualifying standard, opened a lead of over 30 seconds on 2nd place and broke the stage record dating back to 2003. Nagasaki held the lead over the next two stages, but near the end of the Fourth Stage they were run down by Nagano . On the Fifth Stage high school 3rd-year Rina Kimura tied the stage record to take Miyagi from 3rd past Nagano into 1st. But from the Fifth through Seventh...

Three-time National High School Ekiden champion Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. released an announcement on Mar. 19 revealing that alumna Emi Ikeda , 35, will take over as the team's head coach effective Apr. 1. Previous head coach Yoshinobu Ogino will remain on in an advisory position. Speaking enthusiastically at the announcement press conference, Ikeda told the media, "I want to learn from Ogino's wealth of knowhow concerning leadership and aim to be #1 in Japan." Last year marked 30 straight years of Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. making the National High School Ekiden. Ogino commented, "As I approached age 70 I started to think that I would regret it if I didn't help to develop the team's next leader. The color that has been wrought over a long history will run even deeper, and the Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. name will live on forever." Ikeda is a native of Kyotanabe, Kyoto. Her runner-up placing on the First Stage of the 2000 National High School Ekiden was key t...

video highlights by NHK Coming back from a win in her marathon debut at last August's Hokkaido Marathon, 2016 10000 m national champion Ayuko Suzuki anchored the Aichi prefecture team to the National Women's Ekiden title in a back-and-forth race with hosts Kyoto . An entertaining format with teams made up of the best junior high school, high school, university and pro runners from each of Japan's 47 prefectures, the National Women's Ekiden and its male counterpart next weekend in Hiroshima make up the peak of championship ekiden season. Aichi took the lead on the second of the day's nine stages thanks to a stage win by high schooler Yumi Fujinaka and from there to the end was never out of the top two. After a brief challenge from Chiba Aichi didn't get its first real threat until Kyoto pulled up even on the Fifth Stage, both teams handing off simultaneously to the Sixth. Kyoto fell as far as 26 seconds behind over the next two stages, but junior high...

5th in the women's 10000 m at the 2013 Moscow World Championships, Hitomi Niiya (30, Nike Tokyo TC) returned to Japan on Dec. 15 from Melbourne, Australia. In her first track 10000 m since Moscow over five years ago Niiya won the Zatopek:10 in 31:32.50 to clear the 2019 Doha World Championships entry standard of 31:50.00. "I just barely cleared my minimum goal," she said of her performance. In the Zatopek:10 race Niiya showed that her aggressive style lives on. Taking off from the lead group after only 2000 m she ran the entire rest of the way to the win alone. "The last 3000 m were hard," she said. "I understood that I'm not doing enough distance in training." Asked to compare her performance to her golden years in Moscow, where she ran an all-time Japanese #3 mark of 30:56.70 she rated Zatopek "50-60%." In just her fifth race since starting to make a comeback in the spring from five years of retirement Niiya cleared the World Ch...

Key players in Hyogo Prefecture's first National Women's Ekiden in 14 years in January, following their graduation from Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. at the end of this month Nozomi Tanaka and Yume Goto  will join a club team at the start of the spring season. Both have enrolled at Doshisha University where they will study in the Sports Health Science Department but will run for the ND 28 Athlete Club based in Amagasaki. Tanaka is the all-time #2 Japanese high school girl over 3000 m with a best of 8:54.27 and beat a field of Kenyan student runners to win last fall's National Sports Festival 3000 m. Goto won the Sixth Stage at the National Women's Ekiden and took 4th in 1500 m at the National Sports Festival. Regarding their decision to join a club team, Tanaka and Goto commented, "Ccorporate leaguers and university runners seem like they're focused on ekidens, so we've chosen a way that'll give us more freedom to run track." Neither will join t...

Hyogo   Prefecture dominated the second half of Sunday’s National Women’s Ekiden , moving up through the field with three straight stage wins to take its first national title in 14 years. In a repeat of her performance at last month’s National High School Ekiden, Hyogo’s Nozomi Tanaka went out front early before getting run down late in the opening stage, leading Hyogo off in 5th. Over the first half of the race the perpetually strong Osaka and Nagano emerged as the frontrunners before a brilliant Fourth Stage course record by Ririka Hironaka brought Nagasaki into the picture. Nagasaki’s fifth runner Chikako Mori extended the lead Hironaka built to 37 seconds with a stage win, but behind her Hyogo’s Mai Ota brought a big run to pass Osaka and Nagano and move into 2nd. A stage win from sixth runner Yume Goto put Hyogo just 2 seconds behind Nagasaki, and with another pair of stage wins from its next two runners Chinatsu Tarumoto and Asuka Ishimatsu Nagasaki was over ...

http://www.yukawanet.com/archives/5166613.html translated by Brett Larner High schooler Yumika Nagahama leading the Jan. 15 National Women's Ekiden for the Kanagawa team. Since the start of the month it's been cold in Japan.  A record-breaking kind of cold that has seen snow piling up even on the Pacific side of the country, and for better or worse that word "snow" has been generating buzz around the world.  Yes, it has been a cold winter, and now that fact has become a hot topic in China.  Particularly in relation to women's distance running. The picture above is from the " National Women's Ekiden " that took place in Kyoto on Jan. 15.  Kyoto experienced a blizzard, even "whiteout" conditions.  Far too harsh to go ahead with staging a running race in conditions like that.  It's natural to wonder why the race wasn't cancelled, but it seems likely that they weren't expecting the snow to escalate to the point that it wo...

http://www.asahi.com/articles/ASK1H63JLK1HUTQP01K.html translated by Brett Larner Hit by heavy snow, organizers of the National Women's Ekiden were unsure if the race could be held until just before its start.  With 10 cm of snow blanketing the ground early on the 15th they leaned toward cancelling the national championship event.  2000 people pitched in to shovel snow off the course, but at 10:30 a.m. just two hours before the scheduled start, there was still snow on Gojo Street.   Teruo Ito , executive director of the Kyoto Athletics Association, commented, "I felt that if the snow melted we would make it in time.  Thinking of the athletes' efforts, I knew that if we did our best to make the race go off as planned we'd absolutely be able to make it happen."

by Brett Larner click photo for video courtesy of  NHK Snow throughout the night and morning yielded to freak weather alternating between piercing sunlight and near-whiteout conditions at the 35th edition of the National Women's Ekiden in Kyoto. A unique format featuring teams of junior high school, high school, university and pro runners from each of Japan's 47 prefectures, the National Women's Ekiden is the peak of ekiden season for most Japanese women. It was an unusually tight race, with the lead turning over five times over the nine-stage, 42.195 km course and 2nd place within 3 seconds of the leader at six of the eight exchanges.  Many of the favorites, including defending champion Aichi , 2015 winner Osaka and powerhouses Hyogo and Okayama , got off to a slow start, ranging from 10th to 44th on the first stage and spending the rest of the race digging themselves out of a hole. 2014 winner Kyoto , course record holder, 2013 winner Kanagawa and the alway...

by Brett Larner video highlights courtesy of broadcaster NHK One of the only bright lights for Japanese long distance at last summer's Beijing World Championships, 2015 national corporate 10000 m champion Ayuko Suzuki delivered an incredible anchor run in Kyoto on Sunday, making up more than a minute and a half over 10 km to give Aichi its first-ever National Women's Ekiden title.  The peak of the women's ekiden season, the National Women's Ekiden features teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures all made up of top local junior high school, high school, university, club and pro runners. The race got off the track start and onto the roads safely without any falls, but a few km into the 6.0 km First Stage  Naoko Koizumi (Niigata), a stage record setter at last month's National Corporate Women's Ekiden, tripped in the front row and went down.  The lead pack went by before Koizumi could get to her feet, but she quickly shot back to the front row in ...

by Brett Larner National Championship ekiden season starts this Sunday, over a month's worth of the year's best racing with no less than eleven major races, almost all of them televised nationwide.  The action starts with the 23rd edition of the National Junior High School Ekiden in Yamaguchi, separate boys' and girls' races marking the national-level debuts for a lot of future talent, many of whom will feature again a month later in the season's final major ekiden.  Simultaneously, the National Corporate Women's Ekiden starts far to the north in Sendai, the main event of the year for the women's corporate league teams in a revised format this year.  Gone are the November regional qualifier ekidens that prevent so many of Japan's runners from racing fall marathons in other countries, replaced with a seeded bracket for top-placing teams at Nationals with a single nationwide qualifying race for the second-tier teams. A week later Kyoto hosts the Nati...

http://www.hochi.co.jp/sports/etc/20150111-OHT1T50282.html translated by Brett Larner Rising stars in the women's long distance world, the Takamatsu sisters powered Osaka to its first National Women's Ekiden win in three years on Jan. 11 in Kyoto.  Their father a Kenyan, Tomomi Musembi Takamatsu (3rd year, Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin J.H.S.) ran the fastest time on the 3.0 km Third Stage to pass five people and put Osaka in 2nd before handing off to older sister Nozomi Musembi Takamatsu (2nd year, Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S.) who, even though losing ground, kept the team in contention with the leaders.  Both played important roles in Osaka winning over defending champion Kyoto by 1 second. Just before the finish and Osaka's come-from-behind win both Takamatsu sisters were all smiles.  Having repeated her stage win from last year, Tomomi said, "I had a lot of strong competition on the Third Stage so I'm really happy to win it again."  Getting a shout of...

by Brett Larner video highlights courtesy of race broadcaster NHK 2012 National Women's Ekiden champion Osaka returned with a vengeance, running down defending champion Kyoto on the anchor stage to win the 2015 national title by one second with fast-closing rivals Hyogo and Aichi coming in within the next two seconds. The National Women's Ekiden features teams from all 47 of Japan's prefectures, each team made up of its territory's best J.H.S., H.S., university and pro runners.  Kyoto got off to a rough start when its opening runner Nanako Kanno , 2nd on the 6.0 km First Stage last year, tripped and fell mid-stage, handing off in 10th 25 seconds behind leader Yuka Ando of Shizuoka .  Osaka was even rockier, last year's First Stage winner Natsuki Omori 8 seconds behind Kanno in 15th.  Undefeated in nearly a year, high schooler Azusa Sumi just missed the course record on the 4.0 km Second Stage to move the Aichi team into 1st by 3 seconds over Kagoshi...

by Brett Larner Ekiden season never really ends, but championship season hits its peak this weekend and next with the Jan. 11 National Women's Ekiden in Kyoto and Jan. 18 National Men's Ekiden in Hiroshima.  Both races feature teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures, made up of the best pro, collegiate, high school and junior high school runners from each region, and both are broadcast live and commercial-free nationwide by NHK.  Follow @JRNLive for live coverage of both starting at 12:30 each day. At the 33rd running of the National Women's Ekiden defending champion Kyoto comes in with seven wins in the last ten years and home ground advantage on the nine-stage, 42.195 km course .  Its team is missing its magic ingredient, last year's Fourth Stage course record setter Ryoko Kizaki (Team Daihatsu), but features veteran Mari Ozaki (Team Noritz) and 2011 Tokyo Marathon winner Noriko Higuchi (Team Wacoal) along with 2014 National University Ekiden winner ...

by Brett Larner click photo for video highlights via broadcaster NHK Driven in part by a stage record by Moscow World Championships marathon 4th-placer Ryoko Kizaki , the hometown Kyoto  team scored the win in a fast and competitive 32nd National Women's Ekiden under nearly perfect conditions Jan. 12 in Kyoto.  The season-ending women's national championship ekiden, the National Women's Ekiden features teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures made up of junior high, high school, university and pro runners competing over 9 stages and 42.195 km broadcast live nationwide and commercial-free. Osaka  led with with a strong opening leg from Natsuki Omori , but on the 4.0 km Second Stage last year's Third Stage course record-setter Nozomi Musembi Takamatsu , daughter of 2001 Nagano Marathon winner Maxwell Musembi  (Kenya), fumbled and dropped Osaka to 11th.  Taking over the lead spot was Azusa Sumi  (Aichi), who opened a lead of 12 seconds over Akari Ota...