japan running news

With the 22nd typhoon of the season hitting Japan's eastern coast, five of Japan's biggest amateur marathons faced the decision of whether to go ahead as scheduled. The biggest of them, the third running of the  Yokohama Marathon , 10th largest in the world last year with 22,594 finishers, was the only one to cancel, a controversial decision that went out Saturday evening ahead of milder-than-expected conditions on race morning. With almost 13,000 finishers last year, the Kanazawa Marathon scored a new course record in its third edition as Kazuya Deguchi (Asahi Kasei) won in 2:18:44, the event's first sub-2:20 apart from disqualified Russian Victor Ugarov 's 2:17:19 at Kanazawa's first running two years ago . Deguchi ran Kanazawa as a tuneup for December's Fukuoka International Marathon. Mitsuko Ino (R2 Nishi Nippon) took eight minutes off the women's course record with a 2:42:24 win. For the second time in its three runnings to date, local res...

by Brett Larner Japan's premier ultramarathon, the Lake Saroma 100 km and 50 km , saw its 27th running on Sunday, June 24. The 100 km was largely a battle of familiar faces on both the men's and women's sides, as national team stalwart and 2011 4th-placer Yoshikazu Hara moved up to take the win over last year's runner-up Hideo Nojo in 6:33:32.  Nojo improved on last year's mark but was still over two minutes behind Hara, running 6:35:52. In the women's race defending champion Naomi Ochiai was only 4th in 7:56:42, but 2011 runner-up   Shiho Katayama took over 20 minutes off her time from last year to win in a world-leading 7:33:38.  Last year's 50 km division winner and former corporate marathoner Yuka Ezaki made a good transition to the 100 km distance, finishing 5th in 8:04:02. The most surprising action came in the 50 km, where 25-year-old  Chiyuki Mochizuki (Canon AC Kyushu), the two-time Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon women's division winn...

by Brett Larner For the second-straight year, Shinji Nakadai  (Harriers AC) was the top Japanese man at the IAU 100 km World Championships, held this year in Winschoten, Netherlands.  The defending individual men's world champion, Nakadai made no attempt to follow the reckless early pace set by eventual winner Giorgio Calcaterra , who averaged as fast as 3:42/km in the first stages of the race.  Neither did any of the other athletes in the field, as Calcaterra took the world title by a margin of over 15 minutes.  The strong American squad kept three men in the top pack throughout the race and ended up taking the individual silver and bronze medals as well as team gold led by veteran Michael Wardian .  Nakadai faded after 80 km, taking 5th in 6:48:32, but thanks in large part to a solid 10th-place run by teammate Yoshiki Takada  Japan was able to nail down the team silver medal by just 1:51 over Calcaterra's Italy squad which went home with bronze. The w...