japan running news

http://www.kobe-np.co.jp/news/shakai/201502/0007744581.shtml translated by Brett Larner At the first edition of the Himeji Castle World Heritage Site Marathon on Feb. 22, senior patrol officer Makoto Yukitomo , 33, of Suma Police Station Department 3 will run as an invited elite athlete.  In his student days at Senshu University Officer Yukitomo ran the most competitive stage at the prestigious Hakone Ekiden, the Second Stage, two years in a row.  As a rookie police officer living in the Himeji police dormitory his regular running course was around Himeji Castle.  "It's fun to run on familiar old ground," he said in anticipation of the starting gun. Officer Yukitomo was born in Yanai, Yamaguchi.  A member of his junior high school's kendo club, at a school sports day running event he caught the eye of the track coach who convinced him to become a long distance runner.  With a good track record of results in hard training he was recommended to and accepted...

Every now and then you get the pleasure of seeing someone who is truly good at what they do. おめでとうございます。

http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=spo_30&k=2009041700970 http://sports.nikkei.co.jp/index.aspx?n=SSXKF0657%2017042009 http://www.daily.co.jp/general/2009/04/18/0001834808.shtml http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/news/f-sp-tp0-20090417-484141.html http://www.sponichi.co.jp/sports/flash/KFullFlash20090421020.html translated and edited by Brett Larner 2004 Athens Olympics women's marathon gold medalist Mizuki Noguchi (Team Sysmex) appeared in Ome, Tokyo on Apr. 17 to give a talk as part of her coach Nobuyuki Fujita's nationwide 'Fujita Running Academy' program. Speaking of her future, Noguchi revealed that she is still undergoing medical treatment as she told the audience, "I'm still looking toward the day when I'm completely healed, but I can't make any concrete plans." After withdrawing from last summer's Beijing Olympics with an injury to her left leg, Noguchi had begun training for a comeback race at September's Berlin Marathon. However, the ...

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/news/p-sp-tp0-20090401-477581.html translated and edited by Brett Larner and Mika Tokairin Master craftsman Hitoshi Mimura (60), the man who made custom shoes for the likes of baseball's Ichiro Suzuki (Seattle Mariners) and Olympic marathon gold medalists Naoko Takahashi and Mizuki Noguchi (Team Sysmex), retired from Asics on Mar. 31 after 42 years with the company. Mimura now plans to launch his own new brand, Mimura Shoes, from a workshop in Kakogawa, Hyogo Prefecture. Certified as a 'modern artisan,' Mimura wants to continue helping support athletes from the ground up. Even on his last day with Asics, Mimura was to be found hard at work matching careful measurements of each individual athlete's feet as he hand-crafts all his shoes. Mimura joined Asics in 1967 and began to make his customized shoes in 1974. Seko, the Soh brothers, Nakayama, Taniguchi, Arimori, Suzuki, Takahashi, Noguchi....the list of Mimura's clients over the ye...