japan running news

http://www.iaaf.org/news/newsid=62442.html

by Brett Larner Apart from the Fukuoka International Cross Country Meet and Sunday's epochal Tokyo Marathon, three other significant races took place in Japan on Feb. 27. Tomoyuki Morita (Team Kanebo) took the Kumanichi 30 km road race, winning in 1:32:14 by 18 seconds over Komazawa University's Akinori Iida . No women competed in this year's running. At the 60th running of the venerable Kashima Yutoku Road Race, Hiroaki Koike (Toyo Univ.) won the men's half marathon in a modest 1:05:04, the only runner to break 66. Korean university runner Seung Ho Baek beat Toyo University's Koshi Watanabe by 1 second to win the Inuyama Half Marathon in 1:03:47, while Mao Kuroda lead a near-sweep by Team Yutaka Giken runners in the women's division in a strong 1:12:21. Six women went under 35 minutes and six men under 30 in Inuyama's 10 km. Kumanichi 30 km Kumamoto, 2/27/11 1. Tomoyuki Morita (Team Kanebo) - 1:32:14 2. Akinori Iida (Komazawa Univ.) - 1:32:32 3. Sh...

by Brett Larner This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of one of Japan's oldest and most respected marathons, the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon , usually abbreviated to Betsudai in Japanese. Betsudai has been the site of many historic performances, including Toru Terasawa 's 2:15:16 world record in 1963, Shigeru Soh 's 2:09:06 world record near-miss in 1978, Kodo drummer Kiyoko Obata 's 2:48:52 in 1979 to become the first recorded Japanese woman to complete a marathon in Japan, American Dick Beardsley 's 1981 battle against the Soh twins , future Barcelona Olympic silver medalist and Samuel Wanjiru coach Koichi Morishita 's 2:08:53 debut marathon national record in 1991, Yoshihisa Hosaka 's pair of 60+ world records in 2009 and 2010, and more. Last year on a new, purportedly faster, course, Australian debutant Jeff Hunt turned what would have been a garden-variety 2:10-2:11 pack race into something unforgettable with a thrilling charge up from the second p...

by Brett Larner Updated Jan. 19 with complete elite field. In a special advance release, organizers of the 60th anniversary Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon scheduled for Feb. 6 briefly made the names of some of this year's elite field publicly available on Jan. 14. At the top of the foreign elite field are 2003 Beppu-Oita winner Samson Ramadhani (Tanzania) and the man who made last year's Beppu-Oita of international note with an exciting come-from-behind 3rd-place finish and Australian debut record of 2:11:00, Jeff Hunt . Ramadhani, the 2006 Commonwealth Games and 2007 Biwako Mainichi Marathon champion, returns to Beppu-Oita after defeating Hunt in hot and humid conditions at October's Commonwealth Games where he was 5th in 2:19:31 to Hunt's 2:25:03 13th place finish. The rematch should be one of the highlights of this year's race. Also in the international field are last year's runner-up Daniel Njenga (Kenya/Team Yakult), Ethiopian Abiyote Guta , last year...