japan running news

After last weekend's massive total of 53 people sub-28 for 10000 m at the Hachioji Long Distance and MARCH Taikosen meets , another 17 did it Saturday in the A-heat at the last full Nittai University Time Trials meet of the year. After multiple heats saw winning times under 28:10, Amos Bett (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) led the 16th heat with a  27:44.02 PB, just beating Emmanuel Yegon (Subaru) who was 2nd in 27:44.23. The next 3 were all in 27:45, the top Japanese finisher being Tatsuya Iyoda (Fujitsu) in 27:45.72 for 5th. A total of 9 Japanese men broke 28 minutes, with former Tokai University runner Shotaro Ishihara (SGH) making a corporate league breakthrough in 27:53.19 for 11th. Nittai's Ryuto Hirashima ran a school record 27:56.84 for 13th to add to the school records at Aoyama Gakuin University , Chuo University , Koku Gakuin University and Rikkyo University last weekend. Out of the 20 university teams set to run January's Hakone Ekiden, 13 now have at least one cu...

November's National University Ekiden is the second stop of the three-race university men's ekiden season. Even more than the season-opening Izumo Ekiden, it's pretty much a given that however many teams there are in the field from the Tokyo-area Kanto Region, where almost all the best high schoolers go for university in order to have the chance to run the Hakone Ekiden, the top team from outside Kanto will finish behind all of them. Not including two select teams that don't count in scoring, the 15 Kanto teams at last year's Nationals took the top 15 spots in the field of 25 schools. Koku Gakuin University , Komazawa University , Aoyama Gakuin University , Soka University , Waseda University , Josai University , Rikkyo University and Teikyo University filled the 8-podium to earn places at the 2025 National University Ekiden, with the other 7 having to run yesterday's Kanto Region Qualifier alongside 13 other Kanto-area teams to try to make the return trip. ...

Last month's Izumo Ekiden season opener was unusually action-packed with turnovers in the lead on every stage and a dramatic showdown between anchors Kotaro Shinohara (Komazawa Univ,), Aoi Ota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) and Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Koku Gakuin Univ.). All three schools were expected to be up front again at today's National University Men's Ekiden , and race-morning lineup changes unexpectedly put Shinohara, Ota and Hirabayashi against each other again on the 2nd-to-last stage of the day. Komazawa was immediately in trouble when its first two runners Kosuke Shimako and Shunsuke Kuwata tanked, falling to 16th. AGU was out front after two of the eight legs, with Hibiki Yoshida from Izumo 4th-placer Soka University giving him a run for it and both just missing the 2nd leg CR. AGU led the rest of the way, with a 33:03 CR for the 11.8 km 4th leg by Asahi Kuroda giving it a lead of almost 1:30 that it took another CR from KGU's Ayumu Yamamoto to cut back down ...