japan running news

The 2026 Asian Cross Country Championships happen Saturday in Fukuoka in conjunction with Japan's National Cross Country Championships. Complete entry lists are at the links below, with Japan's entries for the 4 teams as listed. The senior men's 10 km team is especially strong, with 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura (Subaru) leading 3 other men all in the 27:36-27:37 range for 10000 m, Yuma Nishizawa (Toyota Boshoku), Hiromichi Nonaka (Koku Gakuin Univ.) and Kaisei Okada (Chuo Univ.). As of right now there is no info on streaming available, but we'll update this with links if it surfaces. Senior Men's 10 km Yuma Nishizawa (Toyota Boshoku) - 27:36.61 (Hachioji 2025) Hiromichi Nonaka (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 27:36.64 (Hachioji 2025) Kaisei Okada (Chuo Univ.) - 27:37.06 (Hachioji 2025) Ryuji Miura (Subaru) - 28:32.28 (Inzai 2021) / 8:03.43 NR (Monaco 2025) Senior Women's 10 km Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) - 31:03.14 (Osaka 2025) Momoka Kawaguchi (Uniqlo)...

No big surprises at the New Year Ekiden , where 2025 kicked off with a battle between favorites Toyota , Honda and Asahi Kasei that came down to a sprint finish in the last 800 m of the 7-leg, 100 km race. 2017-2020 New Year Ekiden winner Asahi Kasei took the lead from the start with an opening leg win by Sonata Nagashima . On the longest leg, the 21.9 km Second Stage, Yuto Imae from the team most expected to challenge the big three, GMO , made it to the front, but with a great run from Tomoki Ota the defending champs Toyota took the lead on the Third Stage. Samuel Kibathi held on over the short Fourth Leg, but on the Fifth Leg Yusuke Nishiyama showed fatigue from his 2:06:54 at Fukuoka a month ago and was run down by Olympic steepler Ryoma Aoki from 2022-2023 New Year winner Honda and Asahi Kasei's Shuho Dairokuno . Looking very strong over a longer distance than he'd usually run, Aoki opened a 10-second lead on Dairokuno that Honda's 6th runner Toru Kubota turned...

Fukuoka and Hofu were the big races of the weekend in Japan, but there was a lot of other action going on across the country. Saturday at a special one-day edition of the rebranded Nittai University Time Trials series in Yokohama, 19-year-old Sonata Nagashima (Asahi Kasei) followed up Keita Sato 's 27:28.50 U20 10000 m national record last weekend with the second-fastest time ever by a Japanese U20 man, winning the fast heat in 27:44.86. 21-year-old Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.) was just back in 27:47.01 for 2nd, with 3rd through 5th all getting under 28 minutes. The 10000 m National Championships are still coming Dec. 10, but as of this race Japan has 30 men sub-28 this year. By comparison, Kenya has 58, 49 of them done in Japan, Ethiopia has 11, and the U.S.A. has 8. The winner at last month's Fst in Fukuoka road 5 km, Edwin Kisalsak (Fujisan no Meisui) took the men's 5000 m fast heat at Nittai in 13:19.97. Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) was the top Japanese m...

  The final day of the Yecheon U20 Asian Championships was held on June 7. Leading the day's action, Junpei Maseda (Waseda Univ.) won the men's 1500 m in 3:50.15. Maseda, who ran the First Stage at this year's Hakone Ekiden for Waseda, led aggressively from the start. Iraq's M. Al-Khazali made a late challenge, but Maseda held him off to take gold. In the women's 100 mH final, a day after taking silver in the heptathlon Miki Hayashi (Chukyo H.S.) pulled away in the middle phase of the race to win gold in 13.64 -0.4 m/s. Jennifer Saita (Josai H.S.) was the only athlete in the women's 200 m final to break 24 seconds, taking gold in 23.99 -0.1 m/s. Men's 3000 m gold medalist Sonata Nagashima (Asahi Kasei) pulled off the double in the 5000 m, winning again in 14:23.91. In other events, Sota Haraguchi (Juntendo Univ.) cleared a PB 2.18 m for silver in the men's high jump. Haruya Suzaki (Keio Univ.) was 5th at 2.06 m. In the women's 1500 m, 5000 m ...

  The third day of the Yecheon U20 Asian Championships happened Tuesday in South Korea. In the men's 4x100 m relay Japan took the gold medal in 39.76. Scheduled to run in the 200 m, team members Shunya Kimura (Nihon Univ.) and Futo Takasu (Meiji Univ.) were forced to withdraw right before the start of the championships due to injury. This radically changed the team lineup from its original order. 100 m gold and bronze medalists Haruki Narushima (Toyo Univ.) and Kaito Kuroki (Higashi Fukuoka H.S.) ran 1-2 as planned, building a margin of error over the first half of the race. Kuroki handed off to Yuta Sekiguchi (Waseda Univ.), who showed excellent skills running the curve on third. Pole vaulter Eito Watanabe (Tsukuba Univ.), 4th in Sunday's pole vault final, was drafted in to handle anchor duties, and even though other teams made up ground on him he managed to hang on to the lead and bring Japan home in 1st. It was the second-straight U20 Asian Championships 4x100 m gold ...

The U20 Asian Championships started June 4 in Yecheon, South Korea with competition in eight events. In the men's 3000 m, Sonata Nagashima ran 8:19.49 to win the gold medal. With only five athletes in the race, Nagashima took the lead in the first 200 m with a 2:40 first 1000 m. Nobody else could follow that kind of pace, and with a 5:24 split at 2000 m his lead only grew as he coasted in to his first international title. Nagashima joined the Asahi Kasei corporate team in April after graduating from Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. Active in track and field since junior high school, he was a podium placer at the National High School Ekiden and won the opening stages at both last December's National High School Ekiden and January's National Men's Ekiden. In the women's 5000 m, Nanaka Yonezawa of national champion Meijo University took the gold medal in 16:37.37, with Akari Matsumoto of the Sekisui Kagaku corporate team winning silver in 16:42.22. Nozomi Sakurai (Semi H....

Eugene, Oregon is the United States' Nobeoka, a small, isolated city with a local powerhouse of running, but in the case of Athlete Town Nobeoka it's not a university but old school corporate team Asahi Kasei that makes the town's name. Thursday's Golden Games in Nobeoka is its big home meet, and it always produces some of the fastest domestic times of the year. The atmosphere at the GGN is like nothing else, with local fans lining the track pounding on metal sponsor boards with batons and local marathon legend Shigeru Soh on the infield calling out support to each athlete by name over a mic like an MC. Streaming starts at 14:15 local time Thursday, with the main event races starting at 19:05. Meet schedule, start lists and live results are here . JRN will be on-site in Nobeoka. The program is pretty simple: kids' 800 m, 1000 m and 3000 m races in the afternoon, then 10 heats of men's 5000 m, 3 heats of women's 5000 m, and one heat each of 10000 m for w...

There's a first time for everything. In the last major ekiden of the season, 37-year-old Yuichiro Ueno , head coach of the Rikkyo University team that ran the Hakone Ekiden three weeks ago, anchored the Nagano prefecture team to a second-straight course record win at the 28th National Men's Ekiden in Hiroshima. Nagano's Soma Nagahara got things off to a solid start, going one-on-one with favorite Sonata Nagashima of Hyogo on the 7.0 km 1st leg, both going under the old stage CR with Nagashima 1st in 19:39 and Nagahara only 2 seconds back. Over the next two stages Nagano dropped to 4th 20 seconds off the lead, but a pair of new CR from 4th and 5th runners and Saku Chosei H.S. teammates Shunpei Yamaguchi and Hiroto Yoshioka put the team 37 seconds ahead. 6th runner Riku Kobayashi extended that to 49 seconds, giving Ueno a margin of error of just over 3 sec/km on the 13.0 km anchor stage. Ueno first ran the National Men's Ekiden 20 years ago, passing 17 people on...

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...

Corporate women and junior high school students have already had their nationally-televised national championship ekidens, but tomorrow's National High School Ekiden in Kyoto kicks off the busiest part of the year, with 5 days of championship ekiden racing in the span of 10 days. NHK broadcasts high school Nationals live and ad-free on Dec. 25, with the girls' race starting at 10:20 a.m. and the boys at 12:30 p.m. local time. There's not likely to be any internationally-available streaming, but get a VPN and you should be good. With JRN's holiday travel plans canceled because of the weather in the PNW, we'll probably be covering both races live on @JRNLive . Buy us a coffee to help us get through the day. The top high school teams in Japan would do pretty well in the NCAA on both the girls' and boys' sides, meaning two high-level races. In the girls' race, 21.0975 km in five legs, Sendai Ikuei H.S. won in 1:07:16 by over a minute last year but is d...

Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. won its second-straight Hyogo Prefecture High School Ekiden Sunday in Tamba Sasayama, Hyogo to qualify for December's National High School Ekiden Championships . 3rd-year Sonata Nagashima , 3:44.87 for 1500 m in July, 2021 and 13:37.46 for 5000 m in May this year, led things off with a new 28:31 course record for the 10.0 km First Leg. The rest of the Nishiwaki Kogyo team road Nagashima's momentum to a 2:03:31 overall CR for the full 7-stage, 42.195 km course, its 28th time scoring Hyogo representation for Nationals. Runner-up Suma Gakuen H.S. was a kilometer back in 2:06:33, with 3rd-placer Hotoku Gakuen H.S. the only other team under 2:10 in 2:08:40. Nishiwaki Kogyo placed 7th at last year's National High School Ekiden Championships. Its last national title came in 2002, but its overall win record of eight titles still ranks it 2nd-best behind Hiroshima's Sera H.S. 's eleven wins. © 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

The Golden Games in Nobeoka meet lived up to hopes, with indoor 5000 m NR holder Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Denko) kicking for the win in the toughest 5000 m heat of the day. Conservative early on, Endo moved up mid-race past U20 1500 m and 3000 m NR holder Keita Sato (Komazawa Univ.) and U20 5000 m NR holder Yamato Yoshii (Chuo Univ.) to position himself in a lead group that included Richard Kimunyan (Hitachi Butsuryu), Benard Koech (Kyudenko), Evans Keitany (Toyota Boshoku) and other top Japan-based Kenyans. With one lap to go Endo kicked hard enough to bring Suguru Osako 's NR into range, and improbably he held off Keitany and the rest of the competition over the last 200 m to win in a meet record 13:10.69. That was enough to move him up to all-time #2 on the Japanese charts, just 2.59 seconds off Osako's record and well inside the qualifying time for this summer's Oregon World Championships. And that was enough to bring him to instant tears in his post-race interview ...

This has been updated to reflect withdrawals announced late Friday. This weekend kicks off three in a row with major races across Japan. First up Saturday is the National Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka. The senior women's 8 km lost its biggest draw, 18-year-old 30:45.12 10000 m runner Seira Fuwa (Takushoku Univ.), earlier this month when she pulled out to focus on prep for May's 10000 m national championships. In her absence, some of the bigger names include National Corporate Half Marathon winner Dolphine Nyaboke Omare (U.S.E.), 3000 m steeplechase Olympian Yuno Yamanaka  (Ehime Ginko), last year's 5th-placer  Momoka Kawaguchi (Toyota Jidoshokki), and 31:16.48 10000 m runner Minami Yamanouchi (Raffine). Despite losing 10000 m NR holder  Akira Aizawa  (Asahi Kasei) and 3000 m SC NR holder  Ryuji Miura (Juntendo University) to last-minute withdrawals, the senior men's 10 km is thicker on top-level talent, including 1500 m, 3000 m and 5000 m high scho...

video highlights by NHK The team representing Nagano prefecture overcame a slow start to return to the top of the National Men's Ekiden in the event's 25th anniversary edition. Falling as low as 15th out of the 47 prefectural teams in the race after the first three stages, Nagano's fourth and fifth runners Akihito Kimura and Atsushi Utsuno fought their way up to the top three, setting up junior high schooler Hiroto Yoshioka to take over the lead with an 8:22 course record for the 3.0 km Sixth Stage. 8 seconds up on rival Hyogo with 13.0 km to go, Nagano anchor Yuhi Nakaya widened the margin of victory to 17 seconds by race's end with a 37:18 clocking. Beaten only by Fukushima 's Akira Aizawa on time, Nakaya brought Nagano home in a new record of 2:17:11 for the seven-stage, 48.0 km course. Although only two individual stages saw new course records, the top six teams all broke the old record of 2:18:43, Hyogo taking 2nd in 2:17:28 and Saitama 3rd in 2:...