japan running news

Fresh off a 1:00:41 Australian all-comers record at the Launceston Half at the end of May, Haftu Strintzos lived up to the potential he showed there with a negative split 2:06:20 Australian NR and CR to win the ASICS Gold Coast Marathon . Post-race Strintzos was quick to give credit to the expert pacing trio of 2:06:00 runner Tsubasa Ichiyama , who paced Yuki Takei 's 2:07:33 CR last year, 2:07:14 American Ethan Shuley , and 2:07:34 runner Shinsaku Kudo who paced Gold Coast 2 years ago. The trio kept things going slightly hotter than the 3:01 target pace, on track for 2:06:50 most of the way. Ichiyama stopped at 25 km and Kudo at 30 km, and at that point it was down to Strintzos, 2:06:26 runner Hidekazu Hijikata , and the debuting Jinya Ozaki . Shuley was tasked with going to 30 km but, critically, kept it going for another 2 km over the only significant hill on the Gold Coast course. Just as Strintzos did in Launceston, when Shuley stepped off at 32 km Strintzos got to work, spl...

The Gold Coast Marathon is always a big stop on the Japanese calendar, with both the men's and women's CR of 2:07:33 and 2:24:22 set by Japanese athletes in the last 2 years and 5 of the last 7 races won by Japanese men. 3 athletes on the entry list in both the women's and men's races have run faster than those times in the last 3 years, and with solid Japanese contingents there's a good chance of new CR. Almaz Kebede , 2022 winner Lindsay Flanagan and Antonina Kwambai have all run 2:23 since 2024 and have 2:25-level Japanese women Aika Murakami and Kaede Kawamura to deal with. The lack of jet lag for the Japanese tends to play in their favor relative to African athletes, so it should be at least a 5-way race up front. Vanessa Wilson is the top domestic entrant with a 2:28:34 in Berlin 2 years ago. 2:06 Kenyans Benson Tunyo , Dominic Ngeno and Elisha Rotich make up the front end of the men's field, with last year's 3rd-placer Ryoma Takeuchi and rece...

Pretty much every year I write something about how the level of the college athletes at the Hakone Ekiden just keeps going up and up. This year too, the performances by collegiate men at February's Marugame Half and last month's string of 10000 m time trial meets were off the charts. There's got to be a peak somewhere, but it doesn't look like it's anywhere close. How much have things really progressed? Let's take a quick look at the level of the fields at some of the Hakones since 2005. That year there were 19 college teams and one select team, so for the sake of consistency these numbers represent the top 19-ranked teams in the field at each Hakone. With Hakone happening on Jan. 2-3 every year, the listed years are the Hakone year, with the performances listed happening in the calendar year before that. Progression in the 5000 m from 2005 to 2020 was pretty steady, the largest jump happening between 2005 and 2010 at about 3 sec/km. After almost no change from...

The  Tokyo Marathon  announced some withdrawals and additions to the field for next week's race today. Names are as below with reasons given on the Tokyo Marathon website : Men's Marathon Withdrawals Suguru Osako (Japan/Nike) - declines to participate Benard Koech (Kenya/Kyudenko) - in poor condition Hidekazu Hijikata (Japan/Asahi Kasei) - injury Tadashi Isshiki (Japan/NTT Nishi Nihon) - injury Takumi Oishi (Japan/Suzuki) - injury Keigo Yano (Japan/Kao) - injury Tatsuro Oyazaki (Japan/Shindengen) - injury Men's Marathon Additions Hiroaki Furukawa (Japan/Tokyo University Grad School) - 2:16:14 (Kumamoto 2024) Women's Marathon Withdrawals Brigid Kosgei (Kenya) - in poor condition Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia) - in poor condition Men's Wheelchair Withdrawals Jin Hua (China) - injury Women's Wheelchair Withdrawals Eden Rainbow-Cooper (Great Britain) - injury Women's Wheelchair Additions Yen Hoang (U.S.A.) © 2025 Brett Larner , all rights reserved

The Inuyama Half Marathon and National Cross Country Championships are happening Sunday, with Japan's team for March's Belgrade World Cross Country Championships to be mostly drawn from top placers in the different divisions at Nationals. It's being streamed above starting at 10:20 local time, with fields including Takuya Hanyu , Ryuto Igawa , Hazuma Hattori , Yuta Bando , Tomonori Yamaguchi and Masato Imai in the senior men's 10 km, Momoka Kawaguchi , Nana Kuraoka and Chika Kosakai in the senior women's 8 km, Sota Orita , Ryuto Kawahara , Tetsu Sasaki , Shunsuke Kuwata and Soma Nagahara in the junior men's 8 km, and Narumi Okumoto and Nodoka Ashida in the junior women's 6 km. But the main race Sunday is the Osaka Marathon . One of the world's biggest mass-participation marathons, Osaka has deep elite fields especially on the men's side. That's not surprising since for Japanese men it's one of the designated races where they have a...

Four of last year's top five women will be back at the Osaka Marathon , with 2023 winner and CR breaker Helen Tola Bekele returning to face runner-up Beyenu Degefa , Lisa Weightman , and new additions Fancy Chemutai , 2:18:11 in Valencia 2022, and Viola Jelgata Kibiwot , 2:22:57 in Frankfurt last fall. Misaki Ichida was the 2nd Japanese woman last year in 2:25:51 for 5th, and she's the top-ranked domestic name this year at 8th in the field. You wouldn't know Osaka is the third of four big men's marathons in Japan in the course of four months, as 49 sub-2:10 men are entered. It's a completely different field from last year, with the top returning runner being Shohei Otsuka , 8th last year in 2:06:57. Japanese men have to run 2:05:50 to have a chance of taking the third Olympic team spot away from Suguru Osako , and top three-ranked Stephen Kissa , Adeladlew Mamo and Yihunilign Adane are all positioned from 2:04:48 to 2:05:53 to help enable that. Realistically, ev...

Riding the wave of the massive results at last weekend’s Osaka Marathon, the Tokyo Marathon is back this Sunday with what looks set to be the deepest-ever men’s marathon and strong women’s and wheelchair races in the works. Conditions are looking ideal, with the current forecast predicting temperatures of 8˚C at the start rising to 9˚C by the finish, cloud cover, and gentle 2 m/s winds. Fuji TV’s international broadcast will be available worldwide , with leaderboard and athlete tracking here . In the men’s race, an incredible 56 men on the entry list have run sub-2:10 since 2020. The deepest-ever marathon, the 2021 Lake Biwa Marathon, produced 42 sub-2:10 performances. Given that Osaka last week had 32 recent sub-2:10 runners on its list and produced 35 sub-2:10s on a tougher course than Tokyo’s, expect things to go big. With a 2:03:36 in 2019 in Berlin, 2021 London winner Sisay Lemma is the only one in the field to have run sub-2:04. But after a sub-par year in 2022 he’s vulnerable...

The Tokyo Marathon is back to holding its race in the same year as its name, and it's got pretty good fields on both the women's and men's sides. The women's race draws pretty heavily on last fall's Berlin Marathon, with Japan-based Rosemary Wanjiru leading 3 of Berlin's top 4 alongside 2021 Tokyo runner-up Ashete Bekere , 2022 Seoul winner Joan Chelimo Melly , and 2022 Amsterdam 3rd-placer Tsehay Gemechu .  That group of 6 is all in the 2:17:58~2:18:59 range, exactly where the JAAF would like to see the top Japanese woman. Even with super shoes nobody has touched Mizuki Noguchi 's 2:19:12 NR in the almost 18 years since it was set, not that women-only NR holder Mao Ichiyama and last year's Osaka International Women's Marathon winner Mizuki Matsuda haven't tried. Maybe this'll be the year. Maybe not. Tokyo race director Tad Hayano generally hasn't cared at all about having internationals beyond that top tier, but this year there'...

Thursday's public holiday is the traditional date for the East Japan Corporate Men's Ekiden , the first of the regional qualifiers for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship. The New Year Ekiden is the only one of the major championship ekidens without a seeded bracket guaranteeing top-placing teams a spot at the next year's race, something that forces every corporate men's team to run the regional qualifier right in the middle of fall marathon season. Liberalizing that setup would have a measurable effect on men's marathoning, but like everything else in Japan vested financial interests and politics keep things the way they are. This year the East Japan race, which covers the greater Tokyo area and further north, returns to the roads of rural Saitama for 76.9 km in 7 stages after spending the pandemic on a loop course inside a park in the city of Kumagaya. 31 teams are entered, a massive increase due to the move to allow club teams to...

On Sept. 1, New Year Ekiden national champion Honda announced that Hidekazu Hijikata , the 5th-fastest Japanese marathoner ever with a best of 2:06:26, has left its team. Following his departure, Hijikata will transfer to the Asahi Kasei team, 3rd at the New Year Ekiden. Hijikata was a successful ekiden runner at Koku Gakuin University , running a 2:09:50 marathon debut at the 2020 Tokyo Marathon while still a student there. After joining Honda, he ran a massive 2:06:26 PB at the 2021 Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon. At the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden this year he anchored Honda to its first-ever national title. Following up with a 2:08:02 at the Tokyo Marathon in March, he secured his place at the September, 2023 MGC Race Olympic marathon trials. In a statement Hijikata said, "Thanks to everyone who has shown me support the last two and a half years. I'll always be proud of having run for Honda, for having trained with their fantastic coaching staff, and for having gotten to run nex...

A few days ago the Tokyo Marathon announced the domestic elite field for its 2021 edition being held Mar. 6, 2022, with the caveat that final decisions on whether it would go ahead and whether it would have an international field, originally slated to feature men's world record holder Eliud Kipchoge , would have to wait until Feb. 18. Yesterday the Osaka Marathon announced its field for this year's race on Feb. 27, and like Osaka, Tokyo's field gives away its history as a men-only race. The men's field is even more massive than Osaka's, and the women's field only slightly deeper. Overall Tokyo is solid, with the men's NR holder, the women-only NR holder, both half marathon NR holders, the last three Fukuoka International Marathon winners, seven men with recent times under 2:07, 31 under 2:10, 112 under 2:20, and two debuting sub-61 half marathoners. Only three women on the list including women-only NR holder Mao Ichiyama (Wacoal) have gone sub-2:30 vs. th...

With a young team all aged from 20 to 25 but including two Olympians and a 2:06:26 marathoner, Honda  won its first-ever New Year Ekiden corporate men's national title Jan. 1 in Gunma.  Off to a slow start on the 7-stage, 100.0 km course, Honda went from 13th to 23rd in the field of 37 over the first two legs before third runner Naoki Koyama turned things around. With a strong tailwind that pushed the top 7 on his stage under the older course record, Koyama was 8th-fastest in 37:40 for 13.6 km to take Honda up to 14th. Tokyo Olympics 10000 m runner Tatsuhiko Ito handled the race's longest stage, 22.4 km, and with a 1:04:15 putting him at 5th-fastest Ito advanced Honda to 5th overall. Olympic 3000 mSC team member Ryoma Aoki  ran the 2nd-fastest time on the 15.8 km Fifth Stage, surviving a turn into the wind to take Honda to 3rd and setting up sixth man Ken Nakayama  to go for the top position. Initially working together with Tsukasa Koyama  (Subaru) to close ...