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 photos by @rikujolove The race for the Rio Olympic team just got a little more interesting.  Down for the count in the marathon with no successful performances since his 2:09:31 at the 2012 Fukuoka International Marathon, 2:07:48 Olympian Arata Fujiwara (Miki House) came to the Dec. 20 Hofu Yomiuri Marathon off an unexpected pair of low-key marathon wins this fall saying that he hoped to run 2:10 to 2:11 as a step toward a shot at the Rio team at February's Tokyo Marathon.  Defending champion Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) was also back, two weeks after an exhausting 2:12:48 in his own unsuccessful bid for Rio in Fukuoka and saying that he would only be going for a time better than his year-best 2:12:13 from Zurich in April.  Longtime rivals and friends who have had an enormous impact on Japanese marathoning from outside the corporate leagues, Fujiwara and Kawauchi stood on the starting line 3-3 against each other in the marathon. 2013 Hofu...

by Brett Larner As is his tendency, Yuki Kawauchi  (Saitama Pref. Gov't) led the way on a busy weekend that saw Japanese athletes in at least four competitive overseas races. Running the second edition of the Saga Sakura Marathon  in scenic southwesternmost Kyushu despite having changed his workplace this week, Kawauchi took almost nine minutes off the course record and beat last year's winner Tomonori Onitsuka (Team Kyudenko) by more than ten minutes in 2:13:02 CR, his third marathon of the year and second soloing a massive CR in an amateur-level race.  "I haven't been feeling well since the Incheon Half last week and have just been jogging 60 minutes a day, so I'm glad I could at least run passably," he told JRN post-race. "If there hadn't been a strong headwind between 25 and 35 km I would have been a minute faster." Like Onitsuka, women's course record holder Hiroko Yoshitomi (First Dream AC) was knocked back to 2nd as 20-year-old ...

by Brett Larner With just over a week to go the organizers of the Nobeoka Nishi Nippon Marathon have seen fit to release the elite field for the 52nd edition of their event on Feb. 9.  A developmental race with a focus on first-timers and men at the 2:12 to 2:16 level, Nobeoka has seen the debuts of the likes of Moscow World Championships marathon 5th-placer Kentaro Nakamoto  (Team Yasukawa Denki) and serves as a selection race for the annual corporate league junket to the Chicago Marathon.  Last year's winner Hiroaki Sano (Team Honda) debuted in Nobeoka in 2:12:14 before going on to dip under gold label status with a 2:10:29 in Chicago, showing that Nobeoka success can lead to bigger things. Kohei Ogino  (Team Fujitsu) is the fastest man in the field with a 2:13:12 best seven weeks ago at the Hofu Yomiuri Marathon.  If his recovery has gone smoothly he is the favorite, but look for possible challenges from Tadashi Suzuki  (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) and Ya...