japan running news

by Brett Larner Toyo photos by Mika Tokairin A day after winning its second-straight Hakone Ekiden title, Toyo University had a busy Monday morning. The entire team and coaching staff appeared on the nationally-broadcast Sukkiri morning talk show, equivalent to Good Morning America, which devoted today's episode to interviewing team members and asking for their comments on clips from Saturday and Sunday's race. Sukkiri brought in marathon legend Toshihiko Seko for additional expert commentary and questioning. Following the TV appearance, a good deal of which focused on second-year Ryuji Kashiwabara's record-setting Fifth Stage run, the team went straight to Toyo sponsor Nike's flagship store in the heart of the Harajuku/Omotesando fashion district for a lunchtime in-store appearance. Nike had done up the large display windows along Omotesando, Tokyo's most fashionable street, with Hakone uniforms from the four teams it sponsors and oversized lettering which read ...

by Christian Sommer Swiss runner Christian Sommer is a graduate student at Tokyo University, the only school with a graduate team elligible to run in the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai 20 km qualification race . Sommer made Tokyo's team this year and ran the Oct. 17 Yosenkai, finishing as one of the squad's ten scorers. It was an extremely rare event for a foreign runner to appear in the Yosenkai race, all the more so in that Sommer is not a Kenyan brought in as a ringer. Sommer wrote an account of his race for JRN. On October 17 I was given the unique opportunity and big honor to run the Hakone Ekiden Trials. This is a brief report of what happened in the Tokyo University Grad School team on race day from a foreigner's persepctive. Our team meets two hours before the start at the park entrance and so do many other teams. Approaching the meeting point, I feel overwhelmed by the atmosphere: each team, on top of the twelve participating runners, brings a large support group wea...

by Brett Larner Watch the 2009 Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai online on Nihon TV on Oct. 17 from 3:30-5:00 p.m. Click here for more info. As the American NCAA cross-country season chugs along, the home of the world's most competitive university men's distance running, Japan's Kanto region, gets into full swing this weekend with two major 20 km races, the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai qualifying race on Oct. 17 and the Takashimadaira Road Race on Oct. 18. Each year at the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden, the Kanto region's university men's ekiden championships and an event with mass popularity on the scale of the World Series or Superbowl, the top ten teams out of the field of twenty score seeded positions for the following year's Hakone. The remaining ten teams must battle it out with all the other Kanto universities at October's Yosenkai 20 km road race to earn the honor of a place in Hakone. At the Yosenkai teams can field up to twelve runners meeting tough qualification stand...