japan running news

Four big races happen Sunday, and it's looking like only one of them might escape the cold rain that's forecast to hit most of the country that morning. That would be Kyoto's Biwako Cross Country meet, the lesser cousin of Fukuoka's National Cross Country Championships three weeks later but still filling an important hole in the calendar left by the demise of the Chiba Cross Country meet. Biwako attracts a few corporate teams and top high schools like Wacoal and Toyokawa H.S. , but its main claim to fame is as the National Junior High School Cross Country Championships. Complete entry lists here . In the heart of Yokohama's industrial zone Sunday is one of two big half marathons, the Kanagawa Half Marathon and 10 km . Top-tier collegiate runners will be headed for Marugame, on which more later, but a lot of the schools that ran last month's Hakone Ekiden will send big contingents from their rosters of alternates and B-tier runners, and that always makes it one...

On Mar. 3 Tsuyama 9th grader Sherry Drury withdrew from Sunday's Biwako Cross Country Meet. An attorney representing Ms. Drury made the announcement, saying that she is uncomfortable with the amount of media coverage of her recent races and doesn't know how to deal with all the people stopping her to take pictures and talk to her. In comments made public by her attorney Ms. Drury said, "Because of all the changes since the National Women's Ekiden I can't train in freedom like I did before, and all the media reporting on me is wearing me out. I don't like them reporting on things outside my running, things in my private life that I've never talked about publicly like my studies and hobbies. Some magazine reporters have interviewed our neighbors and other people who know me, and some have even gone to my classmates' homes to try to interview them. I don't want other people to have to go through that because of me. I'm going to keep running in h...