japan running news

The last weekend of the academic and fiscal year saw at least 5 meets with good results domestically and abroad. Kicking things off Friday was the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne, where Tomohiro Shinno and Naoto Hasegawa took 1st and 3rd in the men's high jump, both of them only clearing 2.18 m along with 2nd-placer Roman Anastasios . 12 other Japanese athletes were in action on the second day of the meet on Saturday, where 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura ran 3:42.84 for 6th in the men's 1500 m. Nagiya Mori had a better one in the men's 3000 m with a 7:45.40 for 4th. Both Yota Mashiko and Rui Suzuki cleared 8:00 too, Mashiko's 7:53.84 the 2nd-fastest ever by a Japanese-born high schooler. Abigail Fuka Ido and Nagisa Takahashi both placed 3rd in their events, Ido going 23.85 (-0.9) in the women's 200 m and Takahashi clearing 1.82 m in the women's high jump. 8 Japanese men were at The TEN in California to run 10000 m. In the B-heat won by Edward Marks in ...

The Tango University Ekiden , the 85th edition of the Kansai Region University Ekiden Championships, took place Nov. 18 on an 8-stage, 74.4 km course from Miyazu Civic Gymnasium in Kyoto to Hagoromo Field in Tango. Kyoto Sangyo University ran 3:48:08 to win for the first time in 8 years, its 33rd title in event history. 3rd-year Shunpei Awai led off for Kyoto Sangyo with a stage-winning 29:49 on the 9.9 km 1st leg. 2nd runner Kaito Kojima , the top KSU finisher at last month's Hakone Ekiden qualifier, won the 11.8 km 2nd leg to extend the team's lead to 1:16. By the end of the 5th leg the team's lead had continued to grow to 1:51, but 2 stages later it had shrunk to just 38 seconds. Anchor Koki Nakamura came through, though, running a stage best 31:18 for the 10.4 km 8th leg to deliver KSU the win. Kyoto Sangyo didn't run either the Izumo Ekiden or National University Ekiden this season, but at the Hakone Ekiden qualifier it was the top team from outside the Kanto Re...

Two weeks after running 14:44.83 at Kanagawa's Nittai University Time Trials , 22-year-old Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) continued her rise up the ranks to global relevance with another stellar run at Nittai on Sunday. Running in the fastest 3000 m heat with support from 19-year-old Agnes Mwikali (Kyocera), Akidor took nearly 20 seconds off her best with an 8:32.53 for the win. That was the fastest ever run in Japan by 3 seconds and enough to put her #8 in the world this year. Mwikali was solid too at 8:37.17, almost 10 seconds under her previous best and the next-best ever run in Japan apart from two dodgy early '90s marks by Soviet athletes. 3rd-placer Mizuki Michishita (Rikkyo Univ.) was in another league at 9:13.68. Kazuna Kanetomo (Kyocera) won the women's 5000 m A-heat in 15:56.42, the only woman under 15 minutes. In the men's 5000 m Kenyan Richard Etir won the A-heat in 13:16.20, a time beaten this weekend only by Benard Koech (Kyudenko) at Fukuoka's ...

The sheer gravitational pull of the Hakone Ekiden drags most of the top high school boys' distance talent to the Tokyo-centric Kanto Region for university. But for those on the Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe Kansai Region axis, Saturday's Tango University Ekiden was the peak of the season. In the race's 83rd edition, Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University  men overcame a mid-race challenge from Kwansei Gakuin University  to score a fourth-straight Tango win. Ritsumeikan first-year Hayato Omori  got the team out of the gate well with a 27:33 to lead the 9.0 km First Stage. Ritsumeikan's next three runners held the lead, but a course record 35:31 on the 12.3 km Fifth Stage from Kwansei Gakuin's Sota Ueda  dropped Ritsumeikan to 2nd. Kazuki Moriya  extended Kwansei Gakuin's lead from 6 seconds to 1:04, but when KGU's seventh runner Yoshinobu Imai  struggled Ritsumeikan's Maki Yamada  was three to pick up the lead with a new stage record of 38:32 for 13.3 km. Anchor Ryota T...