japan running news

After a day off for New Year's Eve, the peak of championship ekiden season rolls on first thing on Jan. 1 with the 70th edition of the New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship race. The top 40 teams in the country race 100.0 km in 7 legs in Gunma, starting at 9:15 a.m. sharp on New Year's Day. Unedited raw camera feeds from the live broadcast will be streamed live on Youtube above starting at 9:10 a.m., with the official TBS broadcast starting at 8:30 a.m. and streaming of the broadcast on TVer . During the race live results will be posted here . Every team has to requalify for the New Year Ekiden by running one of the 6 regional corporate ekidens in early November. Usually they're pretty similar in length and elevation change at around 80 km, making a rough comparison of where teams stand fairly straightforward. This time the East Japan race was only 74.6 km and the Kyushu race 89.3 km, meaning that going by average pace the East Japan teams had an advant...

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship kicks off 2025 early, with streaming starting at 9:00 a.m. local time January 1st and the race going off at 9:15. At 7 legs totaling 100 km it's the peak of the year for the corporate leagues, the reason they have teams and bring in Kenyans. Last year Toyota led from the Second Stage to the finish, outrunning 2022-2023 winner Honda and 2017-2020 winner Asahi Kasei to take the national title for the first time since 2016. How is Toyota looking this year? On the one hand they've picked up fresh incoming talent like last year's Komazawa University captain Mebuki Suzuki . On the other, some of its key players like Tomoki Ota and Ren Tazawa have been dealing with injury, and at November's Chubu Region qualifying race Toyota lost by a minute to Toyota Boshoku , who broke the Chubu CR. A lot of Honda's A-list was missing from its lineup at the East Japan Region qualifying race , where it was only 7th out...

We're deep into championship ekiden season. Over the last two weekends the six regions making up the corporate leagues held their qualifying races for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships. The New Year Ekiden is one of the only national-level championship ekidens that doesn't give its podium finishers auto-qualifying spots for the next year, meaning every team has to run the regional races every November. It's not hard to see how that eats into the fall marathon season and how doing it the same way they do for all the other big ekidens, including the corporate women's national championships later this month, and having the top teams auto-qualify, would open up the fall schedule and improve Japan's performances in men's marathoning. But it is what it is right now. In place of an auto-qualifying spot for podium finishers, the national corporate federation redistributes the wealth of qualifying slots available in each region based ...

Along with Saturday's The Fst in Fukuoka there was a lot going on on the roads this weekend across the country, but the biggest results were on the track. Saturday at the Nittai University Time Trials , Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) soloed a 14:47.71 Olympic standard 5000 m, over a minute faster than runner-up Kana Mizumoto (Edion) who ran 15:49.25. Akidor's coach reported her splits as 2:53.7 - 3:00.3 - 2:59.9 - 3:00.8 - 2:52.2. Charles Wanjiku Kamau (Musashino Gakuin Univ.) ran 27:40.58 to lead 10 men sub-28 in the fastest 10000 m heat, 5 of them Kenyan and 5 Japanese. Most notably, just 6 days after winning back-to-back stages at the National University Ekiden Josai University 2nd-year duo Victor Kimutai and Shoya Saito joined the sub-28 club, Kimutai 2nd in 27:41.04 and Saito 9th in 27:59.68. 3 other Josai runners were sub-29 in the B and C heats. Something has finally clicked at the Josai program this season, and together with great runs at Izumo and Nationals the r...

Qualification for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships wrapped up Sunday with the last four regional corporate ekidens. In the highly competitive Chubu Region race, Toyota , the winner the last 7 years, struggled when Bedan Karoki  finished only 8th on the Second Stage. Despite Toyota's fourth runner Tomoki Ota  making up a lot of the ground with a sensational 43:48 CR on his 15.5 km stage, almost a minute under the old record and 45:18 pace for 10 miles, Toyota faced pressure throughout the race from Toyota Boshoku . A 34:07 course record for the 11.8 km Seventh Stage by anchor Yuji Onoda  was enough to seal the win for Toyota Boshoku, finishing the 80.5 km race 39 seconds up on Toyota in 3:54:15.  Aichi Seiko  was the top team to miss the qualifying cutoff, almost two minutes behind the last qualifier, Chuo Hatsujo , in 3:59:13. Held simultaneously with the Chubu Region race, the Hokuriku Region saw an even closer margin of vict...

Ekiden week rolls on with the first major race of 2021 worldwide, the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships. Asahi Kasei  is going for a fifth-straight national title, something they've managed twice before with six-packs of wins in 1978-1983 and 1990-1995. And really, who's going to stop them?  In September Asahi Kasei took delivery of the world's largest low-pressure altitude training facility so that they didn't have to deal with traveling to get to altitude, and just look at the results. At the National Championships earlier this month they had five guys under 28 minutes for 10000 m including a 27:18.75 national record from rookie Akira Aizawa , and a sixth man, Shuho Dairokuno , across the line in 28:01.29. And both of their Kenyan runners Robert Mwei  and Benuel Mogeni  are sub-28. And they have other guys like Hiroshi Ichida  who aren't quite up to that level but always deliver come ekiden day.  Asahi Kasei broke the New Y...

The last two qualifying races for the 64th New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships on Jan.1 took place Nov. 17. At the 62nd Kansai Corporate Ekiden in Wakayama, 14 teams competed for the 4 spots available at the New Year Ekiden. The SGH Group team covered the 7-stage, 80.45 km course in 3:57:43 to claim its first win in 2 years. Sumitomo Denko was 2nd just 13 seconds back from SGH Group, with Osaka Gas taking 3rd in a team record performance. Last year's winner NTT Nishi Nihon placed 4th to round out the list of qualifiers. At the Chubu / Hokuriku Corporate Ekiden , local powerhouse Toyota ran 3:55:38 for the 7-stage, 80.5 km course to win the Chubu region division for the sixth year in a row. On the Fourth Stage Toyota dropped back from leader Toyota Boshoku , but after getting back on track with quality runs from captain Minato Oishi on the Fifth Stage and 2020 Olympic marathon team member Yuma Hattori on the anchor stage the team succeeded in ope...

The Ageo City Half Marathon , which saw new men's and women's course records and a Swedish national record, was the biggest race of the weekend, but across the country and abroad were a half dozen other events with quality Japanese athletes. Saturday morning in Kyoto was the Tango University Ekiden , the 80th edition of the Kansai Region's university men's ekiden championships. Last year's runner-up Ritsumeikan University finished up a strong season with a decision win, leading start to finish to cover the 8-stage, 84.1 km course in 4:16:00. 2017 winner Kwansei Gakuin University got off to a slow start, 44 seconds behind Ritsumeikan in 5th after the first stage and spending the rest of the race trying to catch up. After six stages it was only 26 seconds behind, but a 35:00 stage record for the 11.7 km anchor leg by Ristumeikan's Shinji Koiwa meant the end of Kwansei Gakuin's hopes. Kyoto Sangyo University was 3rd, briefly threatened mid-race by Hyogo...

Qualifying action for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships continued Sunday with the combined Chubu and Hokuriku regional ekidens . Running both an A and a B team with only the A team having a chance of going on to race on New Year's Day, Toyota destroyed the field as it took 1st and 3rd overall. After a slow start the A-team's Chihiro Miyawaki broke the course record on the 11.5 km Third Stage, covering it in 32:55 to move into the lead. Toyota A-team runners won the last three of the race's seven stages, winning by more than three minutes over closest competition Aisan Kogyo as they broke the overall course record with a new mark of 4:05:35 for the 83.5 km event. Toyota's B-team finished just 16 seconds behind Aisan Kogyo, showing just how much of a stranglehold Toyota has on the Chubu Region. YKK was the top team from the tiny Hokuriku Region, finishing 9th overall in 4:13:34 but moving on to the New Year Ekiden. In Kyoto, ...

by Brett Larner Following other regional corporate league ekiden winners Honda (East Japan), Toyota (Chubu), YKK (Hokuriku), Otsuka Seiyaku (Kansai) and Mazda (Chubu), the Asahi Kasei team brought the qualification round for the 60th anniversary New Year Ekiden national corporate men's championships to a close with a win by more than a kilometer at Monday's Kyushu Corporate Ekiden. The Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden is the primary reason for the existence of Japan's men's corporate team leagues and a nationally-televised event.  It is also one of the few championship ekidens without a seeded bracket, meaning that every team, even the winner, must run one of the November regional qualifying ekidens to re-qualify the next year.  This has a direct impact on Japanese men's ability to run fall marathons outside Japan. With a huge group of new team members this year Asahi Kasei did what every team should, using its regional qualifier as a way to get its rookies used...

by Brett Larner The raison d'être for the Japanese men's corporate team comes bright and early every Jan. 1 with the New Year Ekiden national corporate men's championships.  37 teams from 6 regions square off over 100 km in a race that sees most of the athletes bringing their peak performance of the year; at the 2012 New Year Ekiden, winner Team Nissin Shokuhin ace Yuki Sato 's record of 1:02:51 for the 22.0 km Fourth Stage was equivalent to a 1:00:16 half marathon, faster than the Japanese national record.  TBS will broadcast the race live starting at 8:30 a.m.  Overseas viewers should be able to watch online with Keyhole TV , with coverage also available via Twitter @JRNLive . Nissin Shokuhin comes to the 2013 New Year Ekiden in range of a title defense, but much of its chances depend on Sato.  At November's East Japan regional qualifier he was only 4th on his stage, contributing to the team's loss to the Tsuyoshi Ugachi -led Team Konica Minolta . ...

by Brett Larner January 1 means it's time for the National Corporate Men's Ekiden Championships, the New Year Ekiden . The New Year Ekiden is the focus of the year for professional runners in Japan, seven stages making up 100 km with the African ringers who prop up many of the best teams shoehorned into 8.3 km and Japanese aces stretching out over 22 km. More than the marathon, this is what Japan's top runners are peaking for, and the result is the highest-level racing of the year. Overseas viewers can watch TBS' 6-hour live broadcast online for free beginning at 8:30 a.m. Japan time on New Year's Day via Keyhole TV, available here . That's 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 31 on the west coast of the U.S., 6:30 p.m. on the east coast, or 11:30 p.m. in London. JRN will be doing live English commentary via Twitter @JRNLive . Should the feed max out we will switch over to @NewYearEkiden . For a course map click here . For complete entry lists click here . Turning to the action, i...