japan running news

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...

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...

#3-ranked Komazawa University came on strong over the second half of the National University Ekiden to take a record 17th national title, more than any other program in the national championship race's 57-year history. It had its share of dominant single-stage runs, but more than that this year's Komazawa lineup was consistent across the board, the only school to put all 8 of its runners into the top 5 on their stages, all but 2 of them in the top 3. Over the first 2 legs it was never more than 3 seconds out of 1st, moving up into that position by 1 seconds on the 3rd leg with a good run from 4th-year Yudai Kiyama . 3rd-year Kaisei Yasuhara was the weakest link with only the 5th-best time on the 4th leg, dropping Komazawa back to 4th and 35 seconds behind #2-ranked Chuo University 's Daichi Shibata . But on the next leg Komazawa 4th-year Aoi Ito turned it back around with the biggest run at this year's Nationals, running 35:01 for the 12.4 km 5th leg, 17 seconds unde...

Day two of the 21st U20 Asian Athletics Championships in Dubai was capped with Japan's first gold medal of the games. Less than a month into his first year at 2024 Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University , sub-13:30 high schooler Sota Orita fought off multiple surges from Indian duo Gaurav Bhaskar Bhosale and Vinod Singh to take 5000 m gold in 14:08.71 with 56-second last lap and big a move on the last curve. His new AGU teammate Kaito Iida also finished strong for bronze, coming up just short of silver in 14:09.63. Miku Yanagawa (Gunma T&F Assoc.) added another gold medal to the count in the women's pole vault, winning at 3.85 m on her first attempt, with silver and bronze medalists Anna Cherkashina of Kazakhstan and Melabessy Andriani of Indonesia only going as high as 3.60 m. Nono Tsuneishi (Fukuoka Univ.) won silver in the women's long jump, jumping 6.21 (+0.7) on her 3rd attempt. Gold medalist Nagaraj Pavana also dropped her biggest jump in the third...

Lots of big meets coming up, and entry lists are promising some top Japanese talent at three of the first major ones. On Mar. 7 the JAAF announced a team of 12 men and 12 women for the Mar. 30 Belgrade World Cross Country Championships , with senior men's 10 km 3rd-placer Yuta Bando (Fujitsu) the only one of the top-placing athletes at last month's National Cross Country Championships to pass on running Worlds. There hasn't been any announcement of withdrawals by the JAAF, but as of this writing the official entry lists on the Worlds site list only 5 men and 7 women. All four people on the mixed relay team are there including the Louisiana State University -bound Yuya Sawada (Hamamatsu Shiritsu H.S.) and 1500 m NR holder Nozomi Tanaka (New Balance), but senior men's national champ Tomonori Yamaguchi (Waseda Univ.), the entire U20 men's team, and all but U20 women's 4th-placer Chiseno Ikeda (Ritsumeikan Uji H.S.) are missing. It has to be wrong, right? The...

  A group of seven high schoolers dropped fast 5000 m times at the 310th Nittai University Time Trials meet in Yokohama on Nov. 25. Racing corporate leaguers Kenyan collegians in the Nittaidai Challenge Games fast heat, 3rd-years Kaito Iida (Izumi Chuo H.S.) and Shunpei Yamaguchi (Saku Chosei H.S.) ran 13:34.20 and 13:334.59, the 4th and 5th-best ever by Japanese high school boys. Prior to this race, Iida's PB was 13:57.62 from April this year, with Yamaguchi having run a PB of 13:52.73 in September. At the 2023 National High School Championships Iida was 9th and Yamaguchi 10th. Other Saku Chosei H.S. runners also set new PBs at Nittai. Running in Heat 22, 2nd-year Kazuma Shino ran 13:55.79 and 3rd-year Toma Yoshioka 13:56.99, the first time under 14 minutes for both. At an earlier Nittai Time Trials meet in late September four other Saku Chosei runners broke 14, meaning the all-Japanese team now has six boys at 13 minutes. With 2nd-year Tetsu Sasaki having run a PB 14:03.51 ...