japan running news

A large number of universities that raced last month's Hakone Ekiden competed in the 46th Kanagawa Half Marathon Feb. 4 in Yokohama, with Chuo University 3rd-year Kazusa Takanuma taking the win in a PB 1:02:19. A graduate of Shizuoka's Fujieda Meijo H.S. , Takanuma has never made Chuo's starting roster for any of the major university ekidens, his main achievement to date having been a 22nd-place finish in last May's Kanto Regionals half marathon. Before Kanagawa his best was a 1:03:35 from the 2022 Ageo City Half Marathon, and with another 63-minute time last year he showed the potential he has over long distances. His PB in Kanagawa showed the realization of that potential. 2nd in 2023, Chuo had a disappointing 13th-place finish at Hakone this year. Next month star seniors Yamato Yoshii , Shota Nakano and Jin Yuasa will all graduate. On Jan. 30 Takumi Sano was named captain of Chuo's 2024-25 team, and 3rd-years without ekiden experience like Takanuma are expe...

In the early days of the Hakone Ekiden Koreans were the first group from outside Japan to run and make an impact on the event's history . 60 years after the first two Koreans ran Hakone, Kenyan Douglas Wakiihuri became the first Kenyan to come to Japan to run when he joined the S&B corporate team. After he won the 1987 Rome World Championships marathon and took silver a year later in the Seoul Olympics the door was open for Kenyan and other African athletes to follow Wakiihuri's lead to the corporate leagues, to universities, and even to high schools. Tsutomu Akiyama was responsible for bringing the first two Kenyans to Hakone, recruiting Joseph Otwori and Kennedy Manyisa Isena to go to Yamanashi Gakuin University . "I went to Kenya to see what the people and environment were like," he told JRN. "I watched a cross-country race and thought, 'We have to get someone like that to run for Yamanashi Gakuin.'" Yamanashi Gakuin had debuted at Hakon...

The world's deepest half marathon returned after a 3-year absence Sunday in Ageo, Saitama. In its 35th anniversary year the Ageo City Half Marathon debuted a tweaked new World Athletics-certified course that moved its starting point onto the road outside the stadium traditionally used for its start and finish.  Boniface Mulwa (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) took off from the massive main pack after a leisurely 14:48 opening 5 km, pursued at first by national record holder Yusuke Ogura and Kensuke Tsubura of this season's Izumo and National University Ekiden course record breaker Komazawa University . But Mulwa's sub-14 split from there to 10 km was too much for them, and he ran the rest of the way complete alone out front. Ageo's first sub-61 clocking looked to be in the works, but after a short stretch of undulations leading to 15 km Mulwa slowed just enough to miss that and let the chase group start to come back into sight of him. With a kick on the last lap of the track...

20 runners from  Aoyama Gakuin University  who were not among the school's 10 starting members in its course record win at last week's Hakone Ekiden ran the Hi-Tech Half Marathon Sunday in Tokyo. 3rd-year Takehiro Sekiguchi , who had been scheduled to run Hakone's 20.9 km Fourth Stage but was swapped out on race morning by head coach Susumu Hara , won in 1:02:26, the fastest time this school year by a Japanese-born college student. "I've got one year of school left," said Sekiguchi post-race. "Next season I want to build on the momentum of this win." Including Sekiguchi, a total of 5 AGU runners who had been on the team's 16-man Hakone entry list but not among its 10 starters ran the half marathon. It was a week after the main event, but the race, nicknamed the "Eleventh Stage" by the team, gave them the chance to do something with the fitness they'd built through hard training for Hakone.  Traditionally AGU has run its non-starti...