japan running news

The men's half marathon component of the Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships relocated this year away from the main part of the meet in May to be held as part of the Yaizu Minato Half Marathon in Shizuoka, a longstanding part of the collegiate half marathon calendar with its Pair Marathon team competition. At Kanto Regionals D1 and D2 teams are usually split into 2 separate starts with a time stagger and run on a loop course. This time around they started together, giving people who wouldn't usually be racing together the chance to go head-to-head. Soka University 3rd-year Shoki Yamaguchi was the only one to try to go with Yamanashi Gakuin University 4th-year Brian Kipyegon , both hitting 5 km in 14:28 before Kipyegon said goodbye. Kipyegon rolled on solo to take the D1 title in 1:01:23, just 9 seconds off his own meet record on a different course. Yamaguchi hung on well enough for 1st in the D2 field in 1:02:55, runner-up Kuranosuke Yoshida of last year...

This weekend's big race is the Ageo City Half Marathon , the next stop on the collegiate men's circuit. Most of the universities bound for the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden use Ageo to thin down the list of contenders for their final Hakone rosters, and with JRN's development program that sends the first two Japanese collegiate finishers in Ageo to the United Airlines NYC Half every year a lot of coaches put in some of their A-listers too. That gives Ageo legendary depth and fast front-end speed, with a 1:00:47 course record last year from Kenyan corporate leaguer Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon) and the top 26 all clearing 63 minutes. Since a lot of programs just enter everybody on their rosters you never really know who on the entry list is actually going to show up, but if even a quarter of the people at the top end of this year's list run it'll be a great race, even if conditions are looking likely to be a bit warmer than ideal. Chuo Gakuin University 's Reishi Yoshi...