japan running news

Since the start of JRN's collegiate development program in 2012, a partnership between the New York Road Runners and the Ageo City Half Marathon that brings two of the top male university half marathoners in the country to the United Airlines NYC Half every year, a total of 25 athletes have made the trip. For most of them it's been their first time racing outside Japan. 10 of the 25 have been from Komazawa University , including 4 of the 5 fastest times and 4 of the 5 best placings. Kenta Murayama 's 1:00:57 for 5th in 2017 leads both lists and still stands as the fastest half marathon ever run by a Japanese man on U.S. soil. This year two more Komazawa runners are in New York as numbers 24 and 25, Yudai Kiyama and Hibiki Murakami . At Ageo last November Kiyama and Murakami ran PBs of 1:01:59 and 1:02:04 for 2nd and 4th overall to pick up invites to the NYC Half. A 3rd-year, Kiyama was a national-level 1500 m runner in high school. At Komazawa he struggled to make its ...

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...

Koku Gakuin University 3rd-year Kiyoto Hirabayashi , 21, won Sunday's Osaka Marathon in a debut and collegiate record 2:06:18. KGU head coach Yasuhiro Maeda said the secret to Hirabayashi's speed was "the flexibility of his range of motion." At 168 cm and 44 kg Hirabayashi has a "lightweight body," and rather than adding muscle mass the focus has been on increasing flexibility to enable Hirabayashi to run with a long, dynamic stride like African athletes. In Hirabayshi's training Maeda incorporates a program created by a physical trainer to increase Hirabayashi's mobility in areas like the hip joints and shoulder blades. Although he is very thin, it doesn't mean Hirabayashi doesn't eat well. "He eats a lot, but he just doesn't gain weight," Maeda said. In training Hirabayashi can push both the quantity and quality of his training to his limit. "He's been preparing for this marathon since last summer," Maeda said...

"This year is an Olympic year, but is the Hakone Ekiden really helping Japanese athletics develop?" "Students are not running the Hakone Ekiden because of the Olympics!" This exchange happened in a video on the ABEMA News Youtube channel between comedian Shigeo Takahashi of comedy duo Savannah, and Susumu Hara , head coach of Aoyama Gakuin University which had won the Hakone Ekiden for the seventh time three weeks earlier. Speaking with tremendous energy, Hara went on: "If you think about it rationally, fundamentally the only people who would say they are interested in the Olympics are Japanese people. Japanese are the ones who place so much importance on the Olympics. If you go to the U.S., they have football and basketball. Our press conference after winning this time was an Olympic-level event. There were 50 or 60 news media companies there, a hundred of them, and all the reporters were clamoring for quotes. That has nothing to do with the Olympics. The H...

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships are coming up in just over 24 hours, but there's a limit to how much you can do and we want to focus what energy's left on the Hakone Ekiden's 100th running on Jan. 2 and 3. A quick preview of the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden is here , and if you've got a VPN you'll be able to watch streaming of TBS' broadcast here . If you're still on Twitter follow our live coverage on @JRNLive and @tri_chaser . Good luck to Honda in its shot at a third-straight win, and to everyone else running there. Nippon TV is broadcasting both days of the Hakone Ekiden , with a pre-race show at 7:00 a.m. and the start at 8:00 a.m. each day. Use a VPN to watch streaming of Day One here , and of Day Two here . We'll be covering the race on  @JRNLive and on-site from the Day One finish and Day Two start at Lake Ashi. The story at this year's Hakone Ekiden: Can Komazawa University become the first school to win all t...

It's no secret that Japan's university ekiden season is the pinnacle of the road racing year, and with the pinnacle of that pinnacle celebrating its 100th running this season it's now more than ever. Last year Komazawa University became one of the few schools ever to win all three of the big university men's ekidens, October's Izumo Ekiden , November's National University Ekiden and January's Hakone Ekiden. Popular opinion held that the loss of key seniors to graduation, especially fastest-ever Japanese-born collegiate 10000 m runner Ren Tazawa , would hurt its chances this season, but at Izumo today Komazawa came out to lay waste to that opinion. Iconic head coach Hiroaki Oyagi chose Komazawa's Hakone win this January to announce he was stepping back to an advisory role to allow former marathon NR breaker Atsushi Fujita to step forward as head coach, and in his high-pressure college ekiden debut in that role Fujita struck a tone of erudition in sayin...

Riding the momentum of its Day One win yesterday, Komazawa University dominated Day Two of the 99th Hakone Ekiden for the overall win. Combined with its CR wins at the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden, the Hakone victory made Komazawa only the 5th school to score the triple crown of major ekiden wins in a single season. It was the first triple crown of head coach Hiroaki Oyagi 's career, his biggest achievement at the biggest road race in the world, the one that has eluded him for decades. And, with his post-race announcement that he will step back from his role as head coach, it was his last. Komazawa started Day Two with a 30-second lead over last year's 6th-placer Chuo University and 2:03 over 2022 Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University . Following the success of 1st-year Takuma Yamakawa on the uphill 5th leg yesterday, Oyagi opted to put 1st-year Aoi Ito on the steep downhill 6th leg. Ito excelled, outrunning Chuo's Haruto Wakabayashi by 17 seconds to ...

The Fukuoka International Marathon came to an end earlier this month on the 5th. A winter tradition that brought the locals famous athletes and legendary drama every year, the race was loved by the average person on the Fukuoka streets. Waves of their applause and cheers filled the ears of the marathoners as they gave it all. On a bright early winter day athletes sprang to those streets for the last time from historic Heiwaidai Field, the race's start and finish point. Hana Fujito , 15, a 3rd-year junior high school student who came down to cheer excitedly for her running club's coach, said, "A lot of really famous athletes run here. It's cool to get to run in a big race."  Just past halfway in front of Hakata Station where the race had some dramatic action, the sidewalks were crowded with fans and shoppers. A woman who used to run marathons said, "The course goes near my home, so I've always enjoyed coming to cheer with my daughter. It makes me sad now....

All good things must pass. Tomorrow is the final running of the  Fukuoka International Marathon , Japan's most iconic marathon and last remaining elite men-only race. On paper it has a field to rival the one that broke records at February's final running of the  Lake Biwa Marathon , and with excellent conditions on the forecast and the attitude on display at the pre-race press conference it looks like Fukuoka might get the sendoff it deserves.  Former half marathon and marathon NR holder Yuta Shitara  (Honda) was confident and mature in his answers at the presser, saying his training has been the same as in previous marathons, that he is in Fukuoka to win, and that he plans to run a controlled first half and then push the second. Shitara also announced a sponsor change from Nike, which which he's had a relationship since college, to Puma. Shitara's twin brother Keita Shitara  (Hitachi Butsuryu), 2:12:13 in Tokyo last year, is also in the race, creating the like...

Atlanta Olympics marathon bronze medalist and future Sydney silver medalist Erick Wainaina , future marathon national record holder Atsushi Fujita , and the first Kenyan to go all the way through the Japanese high school, university and corporate league system, Stephen Mayaka , head-to-head at the now-defunct Sapporo Half Marathon in 1998. Atlanta gold medalist Josiah Thugwane is running in 4th in most of this clip but ends up 5th.

Damn, has it already been a week? Time goes by so fast. Times at the Hakone Ekiden this year were fast too. Eight guys broke course records on four of the five stages on Day One , and another five broke the records on three of the five stages on Day Two . Two of the three stages that didn't have new records were just seconds off. Four teams broke the Day One course record, two broke the overall course record, and one broke the Day Two record. This all mirrored what happened a day earlier at the New Year Ekiden , where eight men broke the records on four of the seven stages, at least one other missed by seconds, the top two teams broke the official overall course record and two more broke the record for the actual current version of the course. And not just records. Some of them were historic, epoch-making marks. None more so than Tokyo Kokusai University 's Vincent Yegon , who busted the greatest performance in Hakone history, a 59:25 course record for the 21.4 km Thi...