japan running news

Ayumi Morita (Tokyo Metro) won the women's race at Sunday's Nagano Marathon in dominant style, finishing almost 5 minutes ahead of runner-up Chifumi Ito (MRA) in 2:32:58. Hiroki Nagayama (Sumitomo Denko) had a narrower win in the men's race, running down breakaway leader Kiyohito Akiyama (Aichi Seiko) after 35 km to win 2:12:56 to 2:13:27, with last year's winner Kento Nishi  (Osaka Gas) 3rd in 2:15:48. Elsewhere, Sachi Ito (Pacer TC) won the Kasumigaura Marathon in 2:46:38, a 45-minute improvement on her last appearance at Kasumigaura 8 years ago. Yuki Kawauchi (ANDS) won the men's race in 2:19:10. Australian Ciaran Rushton won Kasumigaura's 10-mile race in 49:36 by 4 seconds over Nozomi Sugaya (Komazawa Univ.), with Aya Inden (Takushoku Univ.) winning the women's 10-miler in 59:30. At the Shanghai Half Marathon Aoi Ota (GMO) made his corporate league debut with a 1:03:05, far off the podium in a race that saw top 3 Roncer Kipkorir , Edmond Kip...

This was one of the busiest weekends of the year for Japanese marathons, with at least five big races across the country. The fastest was the Kanazawa Marathon with a field of 13,000, with Kenta Fukumura winning for the second year in a row in 2:16:51 and Chifumi Ito  running an almost 9-minute PB of 2:34:45 to break the women's course record. At the 10,000-runner Mito Komon Manyu Marathon in Ibaraki, Japan-based Kenyan Benjamin Ngandu won in 2:19:10, the only man to go under 2:20. Kana Numata won the women's race in 2:46:09, Honoka Kurosaki taking 2nd in 2:48:24 and Akiko Maruichi 3rd in 2:49:48. A total of 6,847 people ran the Shimada Oigawa Marathon in Shizuoka. Shunsuke Matsui won the men's race in 2:22:34, with local Natsumi Yamauchi winning the women's race in 3:00:16. With a field of 25,000 the Yokohama Marathon was the biggest, if not the fastest of the weekend. Rikuto Okubo won the men's race in 2:23:45, with former corporate leaguer Yukari Yasu...

The fastest Japanese man inside the qualifying window for October's MGC Race Olympic marathon trials not to have hit any of the qualifying criteria, Kento Nishi (Osaka Gas) got it done with a 2:10:01 win at the Nagano Marathon less than two months after his 2:08:11 PB at February's Osaka Marathon. Nishi, Kensuke Horio (Kyudenko) and Kenji Yamamoto (Mazda) all needed to run in the mid-2:11 range to qualify via the two-race sub-2:10 average route, and when 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Michael Githae (Suzuki) took the race out on mid-2:10 pace it was exactly what they could have hoped for. Githae did all the work as others in range of qualifying like Reo Kuniyuki (Otsuka Seiyaku), Shogo Kanezane (Chugoku Denryoku) and Daisuke Hosomori (YKK) dropped off the lead pack. A surge from Horio after halfway cut the lead group down to just Githae, the three qualifying hopefuls, and Yamamoto's teammate Shun Sadakata (Mazda), and it stayed that way until Githae attack...