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...

Australians Isobel Batt-Doyle and Haftu Strintzos turned in record-breaking performances to win the McGrath Launceston Running Festival Peppers Silo Half Marathon in Tasmania. Running with a private male pacer, NR holder Batt-Doyle dusted the field with the fastest half marathon ever by an Australian woman on Australian soil, a 1:08:46 CR that put her 2 and a half minutes ahead of runner-up Genevieve Gregson . Last year's runner-up Yumi Yoshikawa was almost a minute back from Gregson in 3rd in 1:12:03, but was almost run down by club runner Ayaka Shimoyamada . Starting slow in her international debut, Shimoyamada moved up from 7th over the 2nd half of the race to finish 4th in 1:12:06, kicking hard in the home straight to try to catch Yoshikawa and momentarily blacking out after finishing. Kaho Onishi was 7th in 1:12:45 in her own international debut. The men's half had pacing set at 2:53/km to try to deliver the first-ever sub-61 half marathon on Australian soil. CR holde...

Last year's McGrath Launceston Running Festival Peppers Silo Half Marathon in Tasmania, Australia shaped out into a great Australia vs. Japan dual meet , with Jessica Stenson outrunning Yumi Yoshikawa to take the women's title in a 1:09:51 CR, and Teikyo University school record holder Teruki Shimada executing a tactically brilliant race to drop Isaac Heyne , then-NR holder Brett Robinson , and Teikyo teammate Jinya Ozaki for the win in 1:01:12, just a second off the Australian all-comers record. Marathon NR holder Andy Buchanan took that record down to 1:01:08 at the Gold Coast Half a month later, but its chances of surviving this weekend aren't looking good. Shimada leads last year's top 4 back to Launceston this year, and there's a lot of tough new competition. 2025 National Corporate Half winner Tsubasa Ichiyama , Australia's Haftu Strintzos , new Teikyo record holder Yuta Asakawa and American Ethan Shuley have all run faster that Buchanan's rec...

At the 48th Kanagawa Half Marathon at Yokohama's Nissin Olio Group's Isogo Plant, Jinya Ozaki (Teikyo Univ.) outran tough competition from National University Ekiden champion Komazawa University and Hakone Ekiden winner Aoyama Gakuin University to take 1st in the men's race in 1:02:04. AGU's Sho Fukutomi was 2nd in 1:02:07, with Komazawa's Rinta Muta 3rd in 1:02:08. High schooler Nichika Maeda (Miura Gakuen H.S.) took the women's race in 1:16:30. But it was another high schooler who made headlines. 3rd-year Koki Matsuo (Shiritsu Funabashi H.S.) ran 1:02:47, taking 28 seconds off the fastest half marathon time ever run by a Japanese-born high school student. Last summer Matsuo ran the 5000 m at the National High School Track and Field Championships, and in November he went under 14 minutes for 5000 m, his time of 13:55.07 putting him into the top class of high school running. At last fall's Chiba Prefectural High School Ekiden Matsuo set a new CR of 2...

With great conditions at what organizers billed as the highest-label half marathon in the southern hemisphere, the only half marathon in the south with a World Athletics Elite Label or better, Japan's Teruki Shimada and Australian Commonwealth Games champ Jessica Stenson broke the men's and women's course records at the McGrath Launceston Running Festival Peppers Silo Half Marathon Sunday in Tasmania. The men's race start list read like a rematch of February's Marugame Half Marathon, with most of the 10 fastest men in the race having run there. On the Australian side was an interesting lineup of marathon NR holder Andy Buchanan , half marathon NR holder Brett Robinson , and road 10 km NR holder Sam Clifford , with Teikyo University duo Shimada and Jinya Ozaki and Rikkyo University pair Kento Baba and Hiroto Kuniyasu leading the Japanese contingent in their collective international debuts. Baba, who ran 1:00:26 to finish 2 seconds ahead of Buchanan, was taske...