japan running news

Yeah, this was a good one. Last year's CR-breaking Morinomiyako Ekiden winner and national university women's champion Ritsumeikan University had a lackluster run at the Kansai Region qualifying race at the end of September, finishing only 3rd. That turned out to be a sign of where it is this season and not a peaking issue. Ritsumeikan was in 2nd for the first 2 legs in the 6-stage 38.0 km race with good runs from leading duo Sayuki Ota and Yua Sato but only faded from there, ultimately finishing 5th almost 2 minutes off the win. Josai University , the 1998 and 2000 national champ, came in hot with its first 3 runners Kyo Honma , Koharu Kaneko and Yuna Onishi replicating their feat at the Kanto Region qualifying race of all breaking the CR on their stages. Ichigo Ishikawa , a replacement for Kanto lineup member Aoi Takahashi , ran big on the 4th leg to give Josai a 20-second lead over last year's 5th-placer Tohoku Fukushi University , 49 seconds on 2018-2024 national ...

The Kyoto new year's tradition of female athletes handing off the tasuki returns with the National Women's Ekiden . The entry list has been released, and some of the country's top athletes with international experience will run their first races of the new year there. The National Women's Ekiden starts and finishes at Kyoto's Takebishi Stadium on Sunday, Jan. 15 covering a marathon-distance course divided into nine legs, with teams from each prefecture made up of athletes from junior high school students to the corporate leagues. 2022 Oregon World Championships marathon 9th-placer Mizuki Matsuda will run for the Osaka team, with Nozomi Tanaka running for Hyogo after having participated in three track events in Oregon. Wrapping up her first year at national champion Meijo University , N anaka Yonezawa will run for her high school-era home of Miyagi. Having played an important role in Nagano Higashi H.S. 's first-ever National High School Ekiden win in Kyoto ...

The National High School Ekiden took place Dec. 25 in Kyoto with a live nationwide ad-free broadcast on NHK . In the girls' race , Nagano Higashi H.S. ran a perfect second half to run down 2021 national champ Sendai Ikuei H.S. on the anchor stage for its first-ever national title. In the boys' race , Kurashiki H.S. broke the overall course record by 8 seconds to win for the 3rd time in the race's 73-year history, with runner-up Saku Chosei H.S. running the fastest-ever time by an all-Japanese team thanks in large part to a brilliant run from 5000 m H.S. NR holder Hiroto Yoshioka . 7th last year, the Nagano Higashi girls got off to a good start with leading runner Kanoko Nawa 4th and just 6 seconds off the lead. Sendai Ikuei's Daisy Jerop put the defending champs into the lead on the second leg, with its next two runners Misaki Nagaoka and Kurea Watanabe holding that position. But a stage win from Nagano Higashi's fourth runner Yuka Sato cut Sendai Ikuei...