japan running news

"I hate running. There's only pain. But, it's work and I'm getting paid to do it, so I can't say that I hate it. I have to do my job." Still, she's come right out and said it without hiding her words. Hitomi Niiya (32, Sekisui Kagaku) isn't your average athlete. She's the leader of Japanese women's long distance, having set a new national record of 1:06:38 for the half marathon in January this year. She's a pro who cares about her results and lives by the words, "running fast is all that matters."  Despite scintillating 9th place and 5th place finishes in the 10000 m at the 2012 London Olympics and 2013 Moscow World Championships, she retired in 2014 at the age of just 25. Returning to racing in June, 2018, within two years she was breaking PB after PB and had the Tokyo Olympics in range. Having said that she would "absolutely never" do another marathon, she now says, "there's a possibility." She's a n...

Under the leadership of former men's 800 m national record holder Masato Yokota , 32, on June 22 the Virtual Distance Challenge - A Summer to Leave a Record of Your New Record , a new online competition in which junior high school and high school athletes from across the country can compete for free, was announced. As a result of the coronavirus crisis, both this summer's National Junior High School Championships and National High School Championships were canceled. "I wanted to make sure that our athletes who will carry on our sport in the future still have something to keep their fires burning today," said Yokota of his motivation to undertake a virtual event. Registration for the event opens July 20. Between Aug. 14 and 23 participants must upload times and videos of their performances, which will be ranked geographically and by other criteria. The videos are planned to be made available on Youtube. Along with Yokota, the event's staff include half mar...

Part four in a four-part series of half marathon national record holder Hitomi Niiya and coach Masato Yokota answering questions about her training . Part one here .  Part two here . Part three here . Coach:  Sorry, can I ask an amateurish question? Is this "locking into a rhythm" thing you're talking about something like a "runner's high?" Niiya:  No, totally different. Coach:  I don't get it at all. Niiya:  If it starts to feel like you could go forever then you're there. The times when you're like, "This is a good rhythm. I can keep rolling in this rhythm." Coach:  I've never had a time like that. Q.  They say marathons go the best if you get into your rhythm in the first 5 km. Coach:  I can't run further than 5 km. Niiya:  If you trained some you'd be able to go up to 30 km. But, there are too many times when I can't find my rhythm, and sometimes when someone is pacing me our rhythms don't ...

Part three in a four-part series of half marathon national record holder Hitomi Niiya and coach Masato Yokota answering questions about her training . Part one here  and part two here . Q.  Looking through the questions you received, a lot of people thought you were setting the bar pretty high with the two starting points you mentioned earlier. Coach:  The kind of person with the mentality to pull them off is someone you have to be careful around. Niiya:  Around the end of October coach told me over dinner, "You're going for the NR in the half." I already knew I'd do a half over the winter to work on strengthening my legs, like when I did a guest run at the Minato City Half Marathon in December, but it seemed like coach had positioned it as a national record shot. I asked him, "Are you serious?" He said he knew we thought differently, but after that I tried to do all my training with full awareness of what we were going for. Q.  Did you feel l...

Part two in a four-part series of half marathon national record holder Hitomi Niiya and coach Masato Yokota answering questions about her training . Part one here . Niiya:  I didn't think [the national record] would be that hard to break. All I thought about was 3:10/km. When I looked up what Kayoko Fukushi 's half marathon national record was it was 3:11/km pace. To get the record I had to go 3:10 pace. Up to 10 km that'd be no problem. The problem was after that. When I'd done a half marathon before my legs were dead in the second half. That worried me, but not the idea of going for the national record or anything in the training program. 10000 m is my specialty, and the pace there is 3:05/km. My coach suggested setting that pace, 74 seconds for a track 400 m, as the basic reference, no faster. That was the only point that was fixed, but while I didn't think it'd be easy I wasn't worried about stepping up the distance. Q.  Was setting that kind ...

Last month Hitomi Niiya published her training log for the 100 days leading up to her national record at January's Houston Half Marathonn  on her coach Masato Yokota 's blog in three parts . Receiving dozens of questions about it after posting, the two of them took a stab at answering some of them in an Ekiden News-moderated Q&A format on the same blog. JRN will be publishing it in translation over the next four days. Q. What were the main differences in reaction from elite athletes and amateur runners to what you posted? Coach : Top-level athletes pretty much never publish their training programs in detail, so there was a lot of interest, both inside Japan and elsewhere. Q.  Daichi Seimei corporate team coach Sachiko Yamashita said thanks for Twitter for posting it. Coach:  I replied and told her reading it would cost her, but in all seriousness I'd like to hear what people thought of it. In particular, I wonder what corporate league and Hakone Ekiden ...

Hitomi Niiya  won January's Aramco Houston Half Marathon in 1:06:38, the fastest time ever by a woman born outside Kenya or Ethiopia at that point and a new Japanese national record. Over the last three days her coach Masato Yokota  has published her complete training diary for the three and a half months leading up to Houston. This is part three. Read part one here and part two here . Yokota will answer any questions about Niiya's training left in the comments, so feel free. Thanks for coming back three days in a row. This is the third and final day. It covers December and January's training. You'll be able to see the final approach and sharpening phase. Speaking of which, the only training camp Niiya went on from October on was a week in Okinawa in December. The rest of her training was all done from home in the Tokyo suburbs. Please do not reproduce this info without permission. You're more than welcome to give these workouts a go (although I can't ...

This weekend coach Masato Yokota  is publishing half marathon national record holder Hitomi Niiya 's complete training diary for the 3 months+ leading up to this past January's  Aramco Houston Half Marathon  where Niiya   ran 1:06:38, at that point the fastest time ever by a woman born outside of Kenya or Ethiopia, for the win. This is part two, covering November, 2019. Read part one, October, here . So how did you like the first month of training? I was really happy to see that so many more people than I expected enjoyed reading about it. I read every question that people left in the replies. At some point I'll answer them all, so if you have questions please feel free to leave them in the comment section. Today is the second of three installments of Niiya's training from after the World Championships, covering Oct. 1, 2019 to setting the Japanese national record at the Houston Half on Jan. 19. This covers November's training. Compared to October it gets mo...

At the Jan. 19 Aramco Houston Half Marathon , Hitomi Niiya ran 1:06:38 to break Kayoko Fukushi 's 2006-era national record with support from JRN. Former men's 800 m national record holder Masato Yokota , 32, coached Niiya to that record. Over the next three days he is publishing Niiya's complete training diary for the months leading up to Houston. JRN will be publishing them in English with permission. To people who aren't interested this will just be a list of numbers, but I thought it might help the hardcore track maniacs kill some time if I got Niiya's consent to publish her training diary for the 100 days leading up to Houston. Please do not reproduce this info without permission. You're more than welcome to give these workouts a go (although I can't guarantee you'll survive). Notes in advance ・Easy jogs were once a day on Friday and Sunday, twice a day on other days. ・Strength training every day except Sunday. ・Daily mileage totaled abou...

On Mar. 31 the Fujitsu corporate team announced that 2008 Beijing Olympics men's 4x100 m relay silver medalist Naoki Tsukahara , 34, now a team advisor, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Under medical guidance Tsukahara was hospitalized Mar. 30 at a health center specializing in treatment of infectious disease. He is the first Olympic medalist to have been publicly revealed to have the coronavirus. Tsukahara took part in a track and field training program with over 70 participants in Suzuka, Mie as a guest speaker on Mar. 28 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. At 6:00 p.m. he went to a local hospital after beginning to feel unwell and coming down with a fever. When his fever did not come down the following day, a PCR test was conducted by the hospital under the guidance of the specialized health center. His infection with the coronavirus was confirmed on the 30th. Following the positive result, the Fujitsu corporation disinfected its entire Kawasaki factory, where Tsukah...

by Ryo Ota On Jan. 21 Tsuyoshi Ugachi (32, Konica Minolta) returned from the Jan. 19 Aramco Houston Half Marathon in Texas, U.S.A., where he paced Hitomi Niiya (31, Sekisui Kagaku) to the win in a 1:06:38 Japanese national record. Ugachi earned praise for his perfect pacing work, which pushed Niiya to take 48 seconds off the former national record of 1:07:26 set 14 years ago by Kayoko Fukushi (37, Wacoal). "Coach Yokota called me up and said, 'We'd really like it if you'd help her get the Japanese record,'" Ugachi said. "I've known Niiya since high school, so I think my name must have come up not just as someone who could set the pace but as someone who could give her a feeling of security and peace of mind to reduce stress during the race." Ugachi has been known for his pure guts racing since his days at Komazawa University , where he played a big role in its 2008 Hakone Ekiden win. He has spent the last ten years at the famed  Konica...

https://www.iaaf.org/news/report/niiya-mcsweyn-win-zatopek-10-2018 58th Zatopek:10 Melbourne, Australia, 12/13/18 complete results Women's 10000 m 1. Hitomi Niiya (Japan/Nike Tokyo TC) - 31:32.50 2. Sinead Diver (Australia) - 31:50.98 3. Ellie Pashley (Australia) - 32:17.81 4. Emily Brichacek (Australia) - 32:22.38 5. Camille Buscomb (New Zealand) - 32:28.37 Women's 1500 m 1. Whitney Sharpe (Australia) - 4:16.48 2. Madeleine Murray (Australia) - 4:18.36 3. Lilli Price (Australia) - 4:18.73 4. Natalie Rule (Australia) - 4:22.15 5. Isabella Thornton-Bott (Australia) - 4:23.53 ----- 7. Ran Urabe (Japan/Nike Tokyo TC) - 4:27.32 photo © 2018 Riley Wolff/Tempo Journal, all rights reserved

Livestreaming of today's Zatopek:10 meet in Melbourne, Australia beginning at 6:25 p.m. local time.  Japan's  Ran Urabe  and  Hitomi Niiya   of the Nike Tokyo Track Club will both run,  Urabe in the women's 1500 m at 7:25 p.m. and  Niiya in the women's 10000 m at 8:15 p.m. Full schedule and entries here . Live results will be posted here .

5th in the 10000 m at the 2013 Moscow World Championships, Hitomi Niiya (30, Nike Tokyo TC) left Japan Dec. 7 for her first 10000 m since returning from five years away from the sport, the Dec. 13 Zatopek:10 in Melbourne, Australia. The Zatopek:10 will be her fifth race in a year that saw her run a 31:08 course record on the anchor stage of November's East Japan Women's Ekiden. Her condition is even better than at the time of her come-from-behind East Japan victory. "The result is important, but everything that I could do to be ready for it is done," she told reporters. "All that's left is to run hard for 30 minutes." Since starting her comeback Niiya has run mostly 5000 m, but now her focus has shifted to 10000 m. "If you consider when I was running before a 10, I'm at about 6 or 7 right now" she said. As a test of her fitness she is setting 31:30 as her target. That is more than 30 seconds off her best but would rank her #1 in Ja...

All-time Japanese #3 for 10000 m, Hitomi Niiya (Nike Tokyo TC) makes a return to the distance at Australia's Zatopek:10 next week with support from JRN after five years away from the sport. Niiya's history at the distance is short with only four track 10000 m races to her name, but good ones they were, one and all: 31:28.26, 2012 Hyogo Relay Carnival - 1st 30:59.19, 2012 London Olympics - 9th 31:06.67 MR, 2013 Japanese National Championships - 1st 30:56.70, 2013 Moscow World Championships - 5th Following her crushing defeat over the last lap in Moscow after leading the entire race Niiya quit running and everything to do with it. But in the spring this year, now 30, she decided to try to make a comeback in hope of making the 2020 Olympic team in the 10000 m, telling the media, "I still totally hate running, but unfortunately it seems like this is where I belong."  After three track races from 3000 m to 5000 m between June and October she made a definit...

Ladies and gentlemen, Hitomi Niiya is back. You might remember Hitomi Niiya from the 2013 Moscow World Championships 10000 m, where she led the entire way only to get destroyed over the last lap and finish 5th in 30:56.70. That made her the third-fastest Japanese woman ever over that distance, but not long after that race she quit the sport entirely, getting an office job as far away from athletics as she could and not running for almost five years. But the pull of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is strong, and, now 30, early this year she made the decision to try to make a comeback. Under the eye of former men's 800 m national record holder Masato Yokota she ran a 3000 m and two 5000 m time trials on the track between April and October before choosing the East Japan Women's Ekiden for her return to the roads and the longer distances. The East Japan Women's Ekiden celebrated its 34th running Sunday, 9 stages totaling 42.195 km through the Fukushima countryside with teams...