japan running news

  Today's Nobeoka Nishi Nippon Marathon was in one of the few places in the country not hit by heavy snow, but even though it was windier than ideal with a strong tailwind 1st half and headwind 2nd half people ran well. After a 1:04:31 fast half the men dropped as slow as 16:03 into the wind between 25 and 30 km, but when the pacers dropped a group of 6 broke free from the pack and got the race back on track with a 15:25 split through 35 km. Even though he only had a 2:15:11 PB  Kazuto Kawabata  was the only one who could sustain that over the next 5 km, and he kept rolling on to win in a new PB of 2:10:27. Amateur Shusei Ohashi  dropped a 2:11:01 PB for 2nd, just holding off the debuting Shoki Yamaguchi  from Soka University  who was 3rd in 2:11:02. 6 of the top 10 ran PBs, the other 4 all running the marathon for the first time and everyone under 2:12:30. Back in 13th, the talented Kenta Murayama  from the local  Asahi Kasei  corporate tea...

Almost totally absent its usual winds, great conditions at the Nobeoka Nishi Nippon Marathon produced overall fast times and a sub-2:10 winning time for the second year in a row. Last year Waseda University 's Yota Ifuku became the first man to break 2:10 in Nobeoka with a surprise 2:09:26 debut for the win. Ifuku was back as a pacer with 2:07 man Tetsuya Yoroizaka from the local national champion Asahi Kasei corporate team, taking the lead group through 30 km almost dead on 3:06/km pace. A lead group of 12 was still together at that point, but just over a kilometer later Jin Yuasa , solid at January's New Year Ekiden in his corporate league debut with the Toyota corporate team with a 2nd-place run on the 11.4 km Sixth Stage, went on the attack. Pre-race Yuasa had said that he planned to bide his time until a strategic uphill between 31 and 32 km, and that's exactly what he did. Pushing on the climb, Yuasa then rolled a 2:52 for the 33rd km to blow the pack apart. F...

It was another busy weekend with marathons in Osaka, Ibaraki and Chiba, a half marathon in Osaka, and post-season ekidens across the country. The Osaka International Women's Marathon was the major one of the bunch, if not an especially memorable race. On a new course that saw the addition of at least two hills and the start and finish point downgraded from the spectacular Yanmar Stadium Nagai to its exterior warmup track, it was basically a race of attrition that saw people fall off the sub-2:20 pace set by the pacers until only three athletes, Ethiopians Haven Hailu Desse and Meseret Gola Sisay and top-ranked Japanese woman Yuka Ando (Wacoal) were left. Desse surged the hardest at 30 km, running on unchallenged from there to win in 2:21:13. Sisay was next in 2:22:12, with Ando 3rd in 2:22:59. More memorable were two mid-race incidents. Just past 5 km, Reia Iwade (Denso) clipped Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku) from behind and both went down. Sato got the worst of it, bloody in b...

After four years away, the Niigata City Marathon returned to the streets of downtown Niigata on Sunday. Early the morning of the 9th marathoners lined up in front of Denka Big Swan Stadium for the first time since 2018, with the 2019 race having been canceled because of a typhoon and the 2020 and 2021 races not held due to the coronavirus pandemic. Between the marathon, 10 km fun run and universal run in which participants could run whatever distance they wanted, 7000 people took part. With Sydney Olympics marathon gold medalist Naoko Takahashi there to cheer them on, runners of all ability shared their joy together at being back together after 4 years away. Shusei Ohashi won the men's race in 2:18:22, Yuka Seki taking 1st in the women's race in 2:54:58. source article: https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/bsn/174368?display=1 translated and edited by Brett Larner

by Brett Larner Following the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden and Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden , the year's first full weekend of road racing included at least four major half marathons across the country. きょう、げんきあっぷはーふまらそんはしりました! たいむべすとでました! pic.twitter.com/2fcLzcZCB1 — Stanley (@stanleysiteki) January 8, 2017 At Tochigi's Takanezawa Genki Up Half Marathon , Kenyan Stanley Siteki , a Tokyo Kokusai University teammate of Hakone anchor stage "phantom winner" Akito Terui , outran Hakone champion Aoyama Gakuin University 's alternates and B-team memeber to win in 1:03:20.   Last year's Takanezawa winner Aritaka Kajiwara was 4th in 1:03:45, exactly a minute slower than his 2016 course record. In Tokyo, the High-Tech Half Marathon , a rebranded version of the popular Mari Tanigawa Half Marathon, saw former JR Higashi Nihon runner Shusei Ohashi win the men's race in 1:05:29.   Eri Suzuki , at 5th the top Japanese woman in last month's Honolulu Marathon , ...

by Brett Larner The proving ground marathon in Japan's Eugene, Athlete Town Nobeoka's Nishi Nippon Marathon hosts its 54th running on Feb. 14.  Proving among other things that change can come even to the most conservative parts of Japan, for the second year in a row Nobeoka will feature a women's field, small and entry-level but still a sign of positive change.  Like the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon a week earlier, Nobeoka's men's field suffers a bit in the face of the Olympic selection races at Tokyo and Lake Biwa just a few weeks later, but it does feature a large lineup of promising first-timers who should help fulfill Nobeoka's original purpose as the race where future marathoners are made. The local Asahi Kasei team fields the top three entrants.  Its Ryoichi Matsuo and Taiki Yoshimura lead the way with recent bests of 2:12:11 and 2:13:12, but the most exciting on the list is Asahi Kasei's Fumihiro Maruyama , 1:29:34 at the 2013 Kumanichi 30 k...