by Brett Larner The Mar. 5 Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon , Biwako for short, is the last of the four races used to choose the three members of the Japanese men's marathon team for August's London World Championships. Two of the three members of last summer's Rio de Janeiro Olympic team top the list of Japanese men in the race, Satoru Sasaki (Team Asahi Kasei) with a 2:08:56 in Fukuoka 2015 and Suehiro Ishikawa (Team Honda) with 2:09:25 last year at Lake Biwa. The pair are the only Japanese athletes in the field with recent sub-2:10 times, a few steps ahead of six 2:10-11 men including the high-potential Tadashi Isshiki (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) and Chihiro Miyawaki (Team Toyota). Four others led by 2014 Asian Games silver medalist Kohei Matsumura (Team MHPS) have broken 2:10 in the past but would need a solid comeback to factor. With the possible exception of Matsumura one of the five debuting sub-63 half marathoners may be more likely to end up in the front-end acti...
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