japan running news

Ekiden season rolls on with Sunday's Ageo City Half Marathon . Most of the universities bound for the Hakone Ekiden, including this season's Izumo Ekiden winner Koku Gakuin University and National University Ekiden winner Komazawa University send big squads to Ageo every year so their coaches can thin down the list of contenders for their 16-name Hakone entry roster. Since 2012 there's been the extra motivation for top talent to run Ageo in JRN's partnership program between Ageo and March's United Airlines NYC Half to bring the top 2 Japanese collegiate finishers in Ageo and their coaches to run in NYC. That's had an impact, with people like this year's Berlin Marathon runner-up Akira Akasaki and former half marathon and marathon NR holder Yuta Shitara having gone through the program. You never really know from the entry lists who's actually going to show up to run in Ageo, but it's always an incredibly deep race with no parallel anywhere excep...

Since the start of JRN's collegiate development program in 2012, a partnership between the New York Road Runners and the Ageo City Half Marathon that brings two of the top male university half marathoners in the country to the United Airlines NYC Half every year, a total of 25 athletes have made the trip. For most of them it's been their first time racing outside Japan. 10 of the 25 have been from Komazawa University , including 4 of the 5 fastest times and 4 of the 5 best placings. Kenta Murayama 's 1:00:57 for 5th in 2017 leads both lists and still stands as the fastest half marathon ever run by a Japanese man on U.S. soil. This year two more Komazawa runners are in New York as numbers 24 and 25, Yudai Kiyama and Hibiki Murakami . At Ageo last November Kiyama and Murakami ran PBs of 1:01:59 and 1:02:04 for 2nd and 4th overall to pick up invites to the NYC Half. A 3rd-year, Kiyama was a national-level 1500 m runner in high school. At Komazawa he struggled to make its ...

The NYRR have announced the elite fields for the 2025 United Airlines NYC Half , and 3 top-tier runners from Japanese universities feature prominently in the men's field. Having just lost his 59:32 collegiate record to Komazawa University 's Kotaro Shinohara in Marugame earlier this month , collegiate 5000 m and 10000 m record holder Richard Etir of Tokyo Kokusai University heads to New York fresh off a 1:05:31 CR on the 23.1 km Hakone Ekiden Second Stage , equivalent to a 59:50 half marathon on a rolling net uphill course. That should predict success on the tough NYC course. He'll be the main competition for newly crowned American record holder Connor Mantz , 59:17 in Houston at the end of January, with defending champ and sub-59 man Abel Kipchumba  in contention too after a 59:52 win at last year's Great North Run. Sub-27 10000 m men Mohammed Ahmed and Woody Kincaid are also debuting. Komazawa teammates Yudai Kiyama and Hibiki Murakami earned spots in New York ...

The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin...

Both the Sendai Ikuei H.S.  girls and the defending champ  Sera H.S.  boys led start-to-finish to win today's National High School Ekiden , Sendai Ikuei becoming the first team in the 33-year history of the girls' event to win the national title five times, and Sera extending its record as the only team in the boys' race's 72 years with double-digit wins to eleven. Cold and windy conditions with off and on snow meant no new stage records, but in both races there were  still fast times. 3rd last year, Sendai Ikuei put its three strongest runners first, leaving the last two stages to debuting first-years. Opening runner Nanaka Yonezawa  ran 19:15 for her 6.0 km stage to put Sendai Ikuei 30 seconds out front. Second runner Kokone Sugimori added 26 seconds to that, running 12:41 for 4.0975 km, with third runner Natsumi Yamanaka  putting in another 19 seconds with a 9:53 stage best on her 3.0 km leg. First-year Kurea Watanabe  added 1 last second on the 3....