japan running news

http://bobhodge.us/fukuoka-heres-to-you/ Bob Hodge , 5th at the Fukuoka International Marathon in 1982, wrote about the announcement that the race will be discontinued after its 75th running in December this year.

Bob "Hodgie-san" Hodge  was kind enough to send me a copy of his autobiography Tales of the Times ahead of the 40th anniversary of his win at the 1982 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon next year. Looking forward to reading it and I'll write more about it once I have. Order a copy here .

Bob Hodge becomes the first non-Japanese and only American to ever win the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon at its 1982 race.

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

Along with Bill Rodgers , Frank Shorter and a small number of others, Bob Hodge is one of the only Americans to ever win a marathon in Japan, earning the lifelong nickname "Hodgie-san." Ahead of this weekend's Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon , Hodge wrote about his win at the famous race's 1982 running. photo: Hodge and 2013 Beppu-Oita winner and course record holder Yuki Kawauchi . I don’t ever look back. Japan is a fantastic place for a racer to run a marathon. Most of the top races there invite a smallish contingent of foreign runners, and I considered myself fortunate and very much honored to be competing in Japan for the second time in just a couple of years. Beppu is a beautiful place on the coastline of the southern island of Kyushu. It's known for its thermal hot springs, and bordered by volcanic mountains rising up from the coast it was a dramatic setting for this race. The race was headed by a couple of busses carrying the media and race offi...