Bumped by a local election from its usual date at the beginning of September to the same day as the Berlin Marathon, the Volksbank Muenster Marathon saw its most competitive men's race ever. With pacers assigned to go 3:04/km with a halfway split of 1:04:30-45, the lead men went through 5 km way ahead of that in 15:02 and 15 km in 45:17. Running his first race in Europe and hoping for a low-2:10 improvement to his 2:10:49 PB in Tokyo this year, Ryuichi Yoshioka , stayed tucked into the lead pack at that point, but Taiki Suzuki , with a 2:11:51 PB from Tokyo and fresh from altitude training in Kenya in hopes of 2:09, was already starting to lose touch. Yoshioka rolled with the lead group through halfway in 1:03:55 on CR pace, but when a break came just before 30 km he was dropped. Most of the people ahead of him ended up running PBs, no small achievement with relatively windy conditions, and for the first time in the race's 23-year history 3 men ended up going under 2:10. Kenya...
the world's window into elite japanese distance running, since 2007