japan running news

The last weekend of the academic and fiscal year saw at least 5 meets with good results domestically and abroad. Kicking things off Friday was the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne, where Tomohiro Shinno and Naoto Hasegawa took 1st and 3rd in the men's high jump, both of them only clearing 2.18 m along with 2nd-placer Roman Anastasios . 12 other Japanese athletes were in action on the second day of the meet on Saturday, where 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura ran 3:42.84 for 6th in the men's 1500 m. Nagiya Mori had a better one in the men's 3000 m with a 7:45.40 for 4th. Both Yota Mashiko and Rui Suzuki cleared 8:00 too, Mashiko's 7:53.84 the 2nd-fastest ever by a Japanese-born high schooler. Abigail Fuka Ido and Nagisa Takahashi both placed 3rd in their events, Ido going 23.85 (-0.9) in the women's 200 m and Takahashi clearing 1.82 m in the women's high jump. 8 Japanese men were at The TEN in California to run 10000 m. In the B-heat won by Edward Marks in ...

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...

After last weekend's massive total of 53 people sub-28 for 10000 m at the Hachioji Long Distance and MARCH Taikosen meets , another 17 did it Saturday in the A-heat at the last full Nittai University Time Trials meet of the year. After multiple heats saw winning times under 28:10, Amos Bett (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) led the 16th heat with a  27:44.02 PB, just beating Emmanuel Yegon (Subaru) who was 2nd in 27:44.23. The next 3 were all in 27:45, the top Japanese finisher being Tatsuya Iyoda (Fujitsu) in 27:45.72 for 5th. A total of 9 Japanese men broke 28 minutes, with former Tokai University runner Shotaro Ishihara (SGH) making a corporate league breakthrough in 27:53.19 for 11th. Nittai's Ryuto Hirashima ran a school record 27:56.84 for 13th to add to the school records at Aoyama Gakuin University , Chuo University , Koku Gakuin University and Rikkyo University last weekend. Out of the 20 university teams set to run January's Hakone Ekiden, 13 now have at least one cu...

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...

Last month's Izumo Ekiden season opener was unusually action-packed with turnovers in the lead on every stage and a dramatic showdown between anchors Kotaro Shinohara (Komazawa Univ,), Aoi Ota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) and Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Koku Gakuin Univ.). All three schools were expected to be up front again at today's National University Men's Ekiden , and race-morning lineup changes unexpectedly put Shinohara, Ota and Hirabayashi against each other again on the 2nd-to-last stage of the day. Komazawa was immediately in trouble when its first two runners Kosuke Shimako and Shunsuke Kuwata tanked, falling to 16th. AGU was out front after two of the eight legs, with Hibiki Yoshida from Izumo 4th-placer Soka University giving him a run for it and both just missing the 2nd leg CR. AGU led the rest of the way, with a 33:03 CR for the 11.8 km 4th leg by Asahi Kuroda giving it a lead of almost 1:30 that it took another CR from KGU's Ayumu Yamamoto to cut back down ...

With the calendar ticking over into October, companies across the country are holding employment offer ceremonies for college students who will join their ranks after graduating next March. 4th-year runners from top universities are also deciding their roads ahead. Having run the fastest-ever time on the Hakone Ekiden's Third Stage and playing a key role in Aoyama Gakuin University 's overall win at the 100th Hakone this past January, Aoi Ota , 22, is set to join the GMO corporate team. His teammates Akimu Nomura , 21, and Kosei Shiraishi , 22, plan to join Sumitomo Denko . Former 5000 m high school record holder Kosuke Ishida , 22, who missed all three big college ekidens last year but has made a stellar recovery this season, will join Subaru after graduating from Toyo University . With the fates of their teams in their hands, they and other 4th-years will give it all in their final seasons before moving on to the next stage of their lives. At the 100th Hakone Ekiden Ota del...

Two big races cap Sunday's road racing action in Japan. First up is the Nagoya Women's Marathon , where last year's winner Ruth Chepngetich is back saying at the pre-race press conference that she's ready to break the course record. Although she's still listed in the field on the English section of the Nagoya site, oddly she has been dropped from the Japanese section's field listing . She wasn't included in yesterday's announcement of the withdrawal of Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist Molly Seidel and Germany's Katharina Steinruck , either language version, so it's possible her absence from the field listing on the Japanese site is a mistake. But it's very odd. Either way, the world's largest women-only marathon has a relatively thin elite field , even thinner with Seidel and Steinruck out. 2021 Valencia winner Nancy Jelagat is the only sub-2:20 runner in the field apart from Chepngetich, with the next tier solidly at the 2:22-2:23 and...

Ekiden season kicks off for real on Monday with the first of the Big Three university men's ekidens, the Izumo Ekiden in Shimane. Fuji TV will be broadcasting Izumo live starting at 12:30 p.m. local time, with pre-race and exchange zone shots streamed on Youtube . Follow @JRNLive for English coverage. Last year was a great season, with three different schools winning the three big races, Tokyo Kokusai University taking Izumo in its debut there, Komazawa University winning November's National University Ekiden, and Aoyama Gakuin University getting back on top of the big one, January's Hakone Ekiden. All three are going to be heavy hitters on Monday, but at the same time it's one of the closest fields ever at Izumo. There's not much difference in level for the top eight teams, all of them having top six runner averages under 14 minutes for 5000 m and under 29 minutes for 10000 m. With the average level so close it could come down to the strongest star runner on t...

The number of Japanese athletes going overseas continues to inch back toward pre-pandemic levels, with people racing in Europe and North America this weekend. Three were at the Adizero: Road to Records promotional event at Adidas world HQ in Germany Saturday, 19-year-old Koku Gakuin University teammates Kiyoto Hirabayashi and Ayumu Yamamoto , and marathoner Mao Uesugi (Starts). Despite low-hanging official road 5 km NR of only 13:55 and 15:52, both times regularly beaten by high schoolers in ekiden racing, both Yamamoto and Uesugi fell far short. Yamamoto, who ran 1:00:43 for the half marathon in February, ran only 14:34 in the men's 5 km, while Uesugi, 2:22:29 at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon, ran 16:12 in the women's 5 km. Hirabayashi was at about the same level in the men's half marathon, running 1:03:33. Two women from the Uniqlo corporate team were at Stanford University's Payton Jordan Invitational in the U.S.A., Mai Shoji in the 5...

The 25th National University Half Marathon took place Sunday in western Tokyo alongside the Tachikawa City Half Marathon . The race that decides the #1 collegiate half marathoner in the country was won by 19-year-old Koku Gakuin University 1st-year Kiyoto Hirabayashi , who pulled away from the field after 14 km to win in 1:01:50. Consistently strong throughout his rookie season, Hirabayashi made KGU's starting team for all the Big Three University Ekidens and took 2nd on the Hakone Ekiden's competitive Ninth Stage. Taiga Nakanishi , KGU's captain for the upcoming 2022-23 year, was 2nd in 1:02:02, just beating Toyo University 2nd-year Kazuki Matsuyama at the line to make it a KGU 1-2. All three qualified for the Japanese team for June's Chengdu World University Games. On one of the first days of true spring warmth, Hirabayashi shouted in joy as he crossed the finish line. When Nakanishi came in seconds later Hirabayashi hugged him, laughing. "This was my first ...

It's the last big weekend of road racing on the Japanese calendar this season. But even before it kicks off, there's a bit of track action Saturday. Tokyo Olympics steepler Kosei Yamaguchi  and a few other Japanese athletes are taking advantage of Australia's borders opening up two weeks ago to run the Sydney Track Classic . Yamaguchi is running in the men's 3000 m national championships, a tuneup for the 3000 mSC at next week's Melbourne Track Classic, both with support from JRN. Streaming and live results here . Back at home on Sunday, the Nagoya Women's Marathon wraps up three straight weekends of big city marathon action in Japan. Kenyan-born Israeli Lonah Chemtai Salpeter  wisely avoided defending her 2:17:45 CR at the Tokyo Marathon last weekend , where world record holder Brigid Kosgei  won in 2:16:02, opting instead to go after the biggest winning payout in the sport, Nagoya's $250,000 USD. It's great to see the biggest women-only marathon in t...

The 50th anniversary National Corporate Half Marathon and 10 km Championships went off with a bang Sunday in Yamaguchi with historic results in both the women's and men's races despite cold and rainy conditions. In the women's half marathon, debut marathon NR holder Yuka Ando (Wacoal) and Rino Goshima (Shiseido), course record breaker on November's National Corporate Women's Ekiden 10.0 km Fifth Stage and 2019 World University Games 10000 m silver medalist, went out relatively conservatively on track for just over 69 minutes at 5 km in 16:24. Kenyan Dolphine Nyaboke Omare (U.S.E.) caught up shortly after that and really got things moving, taking them through 10 km in 32:33 and 15 km in 48:29. That was too much for Goshima, who dropped 9 seconds behind by 15 km, and a bit later for Ando. Omare hammered on to go through 20 km in 1:04:19 en route to a 1:07:56 course record for the win, 15 seconds under the old record set by Yukiko Akaba in 2008. Goshima caught An...