japan running news

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...

April 1 is the start of Japan's new academic and fiscal year, and there's always a wave of transfer announcements to go with it. Some notable ones yesterday: 800 m NR holder Rin Kubo skipped university to go straight to 2023 Queens Ekiden national champion Sekisui Kagaku after her graduation from Higashi Osaka Keiai H.S. Multiple NR holder Nozomi Tanaka rejoined the Toyota Jidoshokki women's team after having left it to pursue a solo pro career as a New Balance athlete. Already on the team for this fall's Nagoya Asian Games in the 10000 m, Ririka Hironaka announced a switch from her longtime home at Japan Post to the Uniqlo women's team. Collegiate marathon record holder Asahi Kuroda joined the 2026 national champion GMO corporate team after graduating from 2026 Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University last week. Hakone Ekdien First Stage CR holder Rui Aoki joins the Sumitomo Denko corporate team after running his final race for 2025 Izumo Ekiden w...

Last weekend's Nagoya Women's Marathon and the Tokyo Marathon the weekend before brought the main part of the first year of qualification for the Marathon Grand Championship Race, Japan's L.A. Olympics marathon trials to be held in Nagoya in October, 2027, to an end. There are still a few races like the Nagano Marathon and overseas World Athletics platinum label races this season where people might qualify, but for the most part we're not likely to see many new additions until August's Hokkaido Marathon, where the qualifying period opened last year. As of right now 16 women and 26 men have qualified, although the first woman to make the cut, Ai Hosoda , announced that she was retiring after Tokyo earlier this month. Out of the 16 women to have qualified so far, Mikuni Yada is the fastest with her 2:19:57 debut at Osaka Women's in January. Including Hosoda that makes 2 qualifiers for the Edion corporate team, but Daihatsu has the biggest share of the field so ...

The Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon was a strictly amateur race on the women's side, Chika Yokota running a 2:43:45 PB for the win. But with 6 spots at the L.A. Olympics marathon trials on the line all the Japanese men were obsessed over getting their places reserved early. 2 first-half falls knocked Ethiopian Abe Gashahun and 2024 Nobeoka Nishi Nippon Marathon winner Yota Ifuku out of the race, but the rest of the field rolled on steadily just under 3:00/km. The pace crew took them to 30 km in 1:29:45, 2:06:15 pace, and at that point there were still 20 in it including the home soil favorites Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda . Inside the last 10 km Ethiopian Getachew Masresha went to the front, followed initially by the debuting Takato Suzuki but let go by the rest of the pack. Once Masresha was about 10 seconds ahead Kuroda, the collegiate record holder and CR breaker on the Hakone Ekiden's legendary uphill Fifth Stage a month ago, picked it up in pursuit. After Kuroda ran ...

After the Osaka International Women's Marathon and Osaka Half Marathon last weekend Japan's winter road season rolls on with 3 big races Sunday. The Kagawa Marugame International Half Marathon has a good field up front in the women's race with 5 runners, Eilish McColgan , Dolphine Omare , Isobel Batt-Doyle , Charlotte Purdue and Yuka Ando , with sub-1:09 bests and the debut of #1 collegiate runner Sarah Wanjiru of Daito Bunka University . 3 men in Marugame have recent sub-60 times, Emmanuel Maru , Richard Etir and Kotaro Shinohara leading the way. Shinohara was one of 2 Japanese men to break 60 at Marugame last year and missed the NR by 3 seconds in 59:30. After a 42:53 CR on his 15.3 km leg at the New Year Ekiden on Jan.1, 45:06 pace for 10 miles, he's looking to pick up at least another 4 seconds this time around. 14 other men in the field are at the 60-minute level, and Chuo University 's sub-28 10000 m runner Yamato Hamaguchi is making a highly anticip...

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 Wakabayashi's 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:...

  On Jan. 8 Aoyama Gakuin University held a victory celebration at the school's Aoyama Campus in Shibuya, Tokyo for its win at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden, the 9th win for AGU in the last 12 years and its second threepeat. AGU's 4th runner at Hakone, Kyosuke Hiramatsu (3rd yr.) took 3rd on his leg and set up Day One anchor Asahi Kuroda (4th yr.) to run down the leader on the uphill Fifth Stage and take the Day One win. At the celebration he revealed that he had been suffering from a rare disorder, acquired idiopathic generalized anhidrosis. This disorder, which the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare estimates to afflict only 100 to 200 people nationwide, primarily men aged 10 to 30, impairs the function of sweat glands throughout the body. As a result those affected have difficulty regulating body temperature and are highly susceptible to heatstroke. The cause is unknown and no established treatment exists, but according to the National Intractable Disease Information Center ...

Video Research, Inc. announced on Jan. 5 that the average viewership rating for Nippon TV's broadcast of the 102nd Hakone Ekiden reached 28.5% for the first day of the race on Jan. 2, and 30.2% for the second day on Jan. 3, an average of 29.4% for the complete broadcast. Last year's race had ratings of 27.9% for Day One, 28.8% for Day Two, and an average of 28.4%. The total viewership for the overall two-day race was 56,217,000, up nearly 800,000 from the 2025 broadcast . 42,679,000 tuned in for the Day One broadcast and 45,547,000 for Day Two. Average audience size was 17,324,000 for the complete broadcast, 16,521,000 for Day One, and 18,012,000 for Day Two. This year's peak viewership rating on Jan. 2 of 33.7% was between 13:13 and 13:14 when Aoyama Gakuin University 's Asahi Kuroda ran down leader Shinsaku Kudo of Waseda University near the end of the uphill Fifth Stage. The overall peak rating of 34.7% came at 9:10 a.m. on Jan. 3 when Aoi Ito of Komazawa Univer...

It seemed at the time that last year's Hakone Ekiden had to have been a peak of some kind, with 4 new course records between Hakone's 10 stages, a new Day Two CR, a new overall CR, and all-time top 3 performances on 5 other stages and the Day One course. But this year went even higher. 5 stages, both Day One and Day Two, and the overall course had their records broken, 3 of the stages that didn't have their CR broken had an all-time #2 performance, 2 of them less than 10 seconds off the CR, and the other 2 stages had an all-time #3 performance. Every stage had at least 2 all-time top 6 performances, the Tenth Stage had 6 in its all-time top 10, and the opening First Stage saw 9 of its 10 fastest-ever runs. The 1:07:16 CR on the uphill Fifth Stage rightfully earned Asahi Kuroda from overall winner Aoyama Gakuin University the MVP award at this year's Hakone , but the other 4 stage CR, 1:00:28 for the 21.3 km First Stage by Koku Gakuin University 's Rui Aoki , 1:05...

  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 ...

After a wild New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships yesterday that saw new CR on 6 of the race's 7 stages and a 7-second miss on the one that wasn't broken, Day One of the 102nd Hakone Ekiden more than lived up to what the pros had done 24 hours earlier. Only one runner, Chuo University 's Yamato Yoshii in 2022, had ever broken 61 minutes for the 21.3 km First Stage , but when Chuo's Daichi Shibata took it out on CR pace the entire field went with him. It took a while for Ageo City Half winner Rui Aoki of Izumo Ekiden champ Koku Gakuin University to move up to the front, but when he did it was decisive. Aoki crushed the CR in 1:00:28, 59:54 half marathon pace, and behind him the next both Shibata and the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team's So Kawasaki from Tsukuba University also went under Yoshii's old 1:00:40 record. 4th through 8th broke 61, setting the tone for the rest of the day. Chuo, KGU, last year's top 2 Aoyama...

The Hakone Ekiden is the world's biggest road race, 2 days of road relay action with Japan's 20 best university teams racing 10 half marathon-scale legs from central Tokyo to the mountains east of Mount Fuji and back. The level just keeps going higher and higher , hitting the point this year where there are teams with 10-runner averages of 13:33.10 for 5000 m, 27:55.98 for 10000 m, and 1:01:20 for the half marathon. It's never been better, and with great weather in the forecast it's safe to say this could be one of the best races in Hakone's 102-year history, especially on Day One. If you've seen it then you know NTV's live broadcast is the best sports broadcast in the world, with the pre-race show kicking off at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on the 2nd and 3rd and the race starting at 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you've got a VPN you should be able to watch it on TVer starting at 7:50 a.m. on the 2nd , and again at 7:50 a.m. on the 3rd . There's even a 2-hour high...

Pretty much every year I write something about how the level of the college athletes at the Hakone Ekiden just keeps going up and up. This year too, the performances by collegiate men at February's Marugame Half and last month's string of 10000 m time trial meets were off the charts. There's got to be a peak somewhere, but it doesn't look like it's anywhere close. How much have things really progressed? Let's take a quick look at the level of the fields at some of the Hakones since 2005. That year there were 19 college teams and one select team, so for the sake of consistency these numbers represent the top 19-ranked teams in the field at each Hakone. With Hakone happening on Jan. 2-3 every year, the listed years are the Hakone year, with the performances listed happening in the calendar year before that. Progression in the 5000 m from 2005 to 2020 was pretty steady, the largest jump happening between 2005 and 2010 at about 3 sec/km. After almost no change from...