japan running news

Last week I was contacted by Will Geiken , who I'd met years ago when he was a part of the Ivy League Select Team at the Izumo Ekiden . He was looking for historical results from Izumo and lists of past team members, and I was able to put together a pretty much complete history, only missing the alternates from 1998 to 2010 and a little shaky on the reverse transliterations of some of the names from katakana back into the Western alphabet for the same years. Feel free to send corrections or additions to alternate lists. It's interesting to go back and see some names that went on to be familiar, to see the people who made an impact like Princeton's Paul Morrison , Cornell's Max King , Stanford's Brendan Gregg in one of the years the team opened up beyond the Ivy League, Cornell's Ben de Haan , Princeton's Matt McDonald , and Harvard's Hugo Milner last year, and some of the people who struggled with the format. 1998 Team: 15th of 21 overall, 2:14:10 (43...

photos by Kazuyuki Sugimatsu On Oct. 8 the U.S. team at the 24th Izumo Ekiden had its best-ever showing, tying last year's best-ever placing at 8th but running over a minute faster for the six-stage, 44.5 km course.  Fifth Stage runner Brendan Gregg  was one of five men on his leg to break the standing course record, second on his stage on time and missing the win by only two seconds behind Ryu Takaku  of defending champion Toyo University .  Historically an Ivy League alumni team, its makeup has shifted over the last two years to become more of an overall U.S. post-collegiate team lineup.  Taking in Tokyo for a few days post-race, the team's members gave JRN their impressions of the Izumo Ekiden, Japanese collegiate runners, the system under which they train and compete and how it compares to the NCAA, and more. Elliott Heath (Stanford Univ., First Stage, 8.0 km – 4th, 23:33) Running in a Japanese ekiden opened my eyes to the Japanese running cultu...