japan running news

by Brett Larner videos by naoki620 After hammering each other to rare Japanese collegiate sub-3:40 PBs to go 1-2 in last month's National University Track & Field Championships 1500 m, defending Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai 20 km winner Enock Omwamba (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) and last year's top Japanese finisher Kota Murayama (Josai University) were back at it to turn this year's race into a two-man show. The qualifying race for the second tier of schools trying to make it into the Hakone Ekiden, Japan's most prestigious race, the Yosenkai is the world's biggest and most competitive 20 km .  Kenyan Omwamba won last year in 57:57, with Murayama 4th overall in 59:17.  This time Omwamba took things out fast enough, leading a front group including Hironori Tsuetaki (Chuo Gakuin Univ.) and first-year Kenyans Stanley Siteki (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) and Lazarus Motanya (Obirin Univ.) through a 2:50 km as Murayama sat a stride or two back at the front of the 2nd...

by Brett Larner A local Ugandan newspaper as tweeted by WUCCC organizers FISU . Hosts Uganda  dominated the 19th edition of the World University Cross Country Championships Mar. 22 in Entebbe, winning both individual gold medals and the women's team gold.  The women's race, four laps of a roughly 1.5 km loop, went out as a race between Uganda and neighboring Kenya , with Kenya's Sheila Kandie leading Uganda's Winnie Nanyondo  and Dorcus Ajok through the first lap before Nanyondo moved to the front.  Uganda's third woman, Prim Twikiriza , sat a few seconds back in the chase back with Japan's Ayumi Uehara , Fuyuka Kimura  and Natsumi Ozawa . On the third lap Nanyondo surged, covering it in 4:56.24, to drop both Kandie and Ajok, and from there she ran alone all the way to the finish to claim gold by a margin of nearly 30 seconds.  Ajok also got clear of Kandie on the third lap for silver, but on the fourth lap she was nearly run down by Twikiriza wh...

http://www.iuau.jp/news/2014/19wuxc_delegate.pdf Following the selection race at last weekend's Fukuoka International Cross Country Meet, the IUAU has announced the Japanese men's and women's team lineups for the Mar. 22 World University Cross Country Championships in Entebbe, Uganda.   Hiroshi Ichida (Daito Bunka Univ.) is the only returning member of Japan's 2012 World University XC team, where Yuta Shitara  (Toyo Univ.) and Daichi Motomura  (Tokai Univ.) won silver and bronze medals respectively.  Ichida was 24th.  A week before this year's Worlds his identical twin brother Takashi Ichida  (Daito Bunka Univ.) will run the New York City Half Marathon with support from JRN. 19th World University Cross Country Championships Entebbe, Uganda, 3/22/14 Men's 10 km Masaya Kakihara (3rd yr., Kanagawa University) - 28:33.50 Hiroshi Ichida (3rd yr., Daito Bunka University) - 28:53.98 Mitsunori Asaoka (3rd yr., Tokyo Nogyo University) - 29:16.89 Shota ...

by Brett Larner Japan's biggest sporting event of the year is the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden, a ten-stage university men's road relay which each runner covering roughly a half marathon distance in front of a live nationwide TV audience of 40 million and millions more cheering courseside.  Each year the top ten of the twenty teams in the Hakone field are seeded to run again the next year, also running October's Izumo Ekiden.  The remaining schools are sent back to run the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai , a 20 km road race qualifier in Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park, along with dozens of other schools from around the Kanto Region hopeful of earning the honor of a place on the starting line at Hakone come Jan. 2. Monday's Izumo Ekiden saw an overall course record for the third time in the last four years , with individual stage records on three of its six legs.  In a sign of the continued explosively rapid rate of growth in Japanese men's collegiate athletics, Saturday's Y...