Yamanaka Sets Course Record, 207 Sub-66 at National University Half Marathon Championships (updated)
by Brett Larner 19-year-old Nittai University second-year Hideto Yamanaka lived up to his superb 2014 Hakone Ekiden First Stage win today in Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park, taking nearly five minutes off his half marathon best to win the National University Half Marathon Championships in a course record 1:02:09. Despite cold temperatures and on-and-off rain, Yamanaka led aggressively from the start before getting away in the final kilometers to win by more than twenty seconds over Waseda University's Daiki Taguchi and Koki Ido and Komazawa University's Yoshihiro Nishizawa and Shota Baba . The momentum of Yamanaka and the others in the front pack pulled the entire field along, all of the top ten going sub-63, nine of them in PB times. For the first time in history more than 200 men cleared 66 minutes in a single half marathon, a new world record which confirmed the upward trend in Japanese university men's performances that has only increased s...