japan running news

by Brett Larner With the start of the fiscal and academic year on April 1 Japan's outdoor track season wasted no time getting started at Saturday's Kanaguri Memorial Meet in Kumamoto.  With five heats of senior men's 5000 m on the menu 1500 m junior world record holder Ronald Kwemoi (Team Komori Corp.) led the way, winning the A-heat in 13:24.42.  Newcomer Abayneh Degu (Team Yasukawa Denki) wasn't far off that in the B-heat, running a 30-second PB of 13:25.55 for the win. Hiroki Matsueda (Team Fujitsu) led the Japanese results, clearing 13:30 for the first time with a 13:28.61 for 3rd in the Kwemoi-led A-heat.  Just 34 days after his 1:01:55-first-half 2:09:27 marathon debut, Yuta Shitara (Team Honda) was only 0.12 seconds off his PB in 13:34.80 for 8th in the same heat. In the B-heat, Matsueda's teammate Ken Yokote (Team Fujitsu) ran a 10-second PB of 13:31.35 for top Japanese honors at 5th overall.  Behind him, Kazuya Shiojiri (Juntendo Univ.), a Rio O...

by Brett Larner 山陽女子ロードレース大会　ハーフマラソンの部　優勝　小原怜選手（天満屋）　１時間１０分０４秒 pic.twitter.com/TcCK4fVuTz — M.Kawaguchi (@rikujolove) December 23, 2016 Japan's Rei Ohara (Team Tenmaya) and Kenyan Rosemary Wanjiru (Team Starts) went it alone to win the 35th anniversary Sanyo Ladies' Road Race half marathon and 10 km divisions with strong negative split runs. After a slow 17:00 first 5 km in the half Ohara got to work, covering the next 5 km in 16:24 and opening a 16-second lead over a pack of nine led by Rio Olympics marathoner Mai Ito (Team Otsuka Seiyaku).  From there she never faltered, her pace holding steady all the way to a 1:10:03 win.  38 seconds behind, Misaki Kato (Team Kyudenko) took 2nd in 1:10:42 with relative newcomer Ayaka Fujimoto (Team Kyocera) 3rd in 1:11:20.  Ito faded to 5th in 1:11:39 just ahead of London Olympics marathoner Risa Shigetomo (Team Tenmaya).  Invited Australians Eloise Wellings and Cassie Fien were both DNFs, Fien dropping out befo...

by Brett Larner 鈴木亜由子 Ayuko Suzuki 約11分14秒点 10km #日本郵政公社 Japan Post @jaaf_official #IAAF #陸上競技 #PaytonJordan 2016年5月1日 pic.twitter.com/mzB6wzeIpn — T&F Snaps here (@TaFphoto) May 3, 2016 Virtually the only bright spot on the Japanese team at last year's Beijing World Championships, Ayuko Suzuki (Team Japan Post) delivered again with the best Japanese performance of this year's Payton Jordan Invitational.  With her 15:08.29 in the Beijing 5000 m final having put her at #5 on the all-time Japanese lists, Suzuki ran a 30-second PB of 31:18.16 for 3rd at Payton Jordan, landing at #8 all-time among Japanese women.  Four other Japanese women went under the 32:15.00 Olympic standard, three of them breaking 32.  Suguru Osako (Nike Oregon Project) was the only Japanese man to clear the 28:00.00 men's Olympic standard, easily outdistancing Japanese year leader Yuta Shitara (Team Honda) for 2nd in 27:50.27. Last year's 5000 m national champion Misaki Onishi (...

by Brett Larner Japan's major mid-summer distance series, the Hokuren Distance Challenge kicked off later than usual this week with meets in the towns of Shibetsu and Fukagawa on the northern island of Hokkaido, where distance runners from high school to pro head in the summer to escape the heat and put in mileage for the fall ekiden season. At the series-opening Shibetsu Meet, the biggest news came in the men's 5000 m A-heat.  Last December Fukushima 10th-grader Hyuga Endo (Gakuho Ishikawa H.S.) exploded into the news with a 13:58.93, the fastest-ever 5000 m by a Japanese 16-year-old.  Now an 11th-grader but still 16 for another month, in Shibetsu Endo smashed his own record with a 13:50.51 PB to finish just behind 2014 Asian Games marathon silver medalist Kohei Matsumura (Team Mitsubishi HPS), the 9th-best time ever by a Japanese high schooler and 2nd-best by an under-18 Japanese runner.  Hilsawat Mamiyo Nuguse (Ethiopia/Team Yasukawa Denki), a newcomer to the Ja...

by Brett Larner 2013 Moscow World Championships men's 10000 m bronze medalist Paul Tanui (Team Kyudenko) capped a weekend of regional corporate track and field championships with a world-leading 27:08.21 meet record at the Kyushu Championships.  Starting at near world record pace with a 2:38.38 first 1000 m Tanui soon calmed down and ran under control, going through halfway in 13:34.98 and lapping the entire field including sub-62 half marathoner Hiroto Inoue (Mitsubishi Hitachi Nagasaki) and three of the Asahi Kasei team's star new recruits, Kota Murayama , Shuho Dairokuno and Takashi Ichida . The women's 10000 m was not quite as fast but still started quick, with Misaki Kato (Team Kyudenko) and Keiko Nogami (Team Juhachi Ginko) going after the sub-32:00.00 Beijing World Championships standard.  The pace slowed off the standard but the pair ran together until the last lap when Kato pulled just ahead to win in 32:13.72. At the East Japan meet Kenyans William Male...

by Brett Larner A week after winning a muddy Chiba XC, Charles Ndirangu (Kenya/Team JFE Steel) was back for his half marathon debut at the National Corporate Half Marathon Championships.  The successor to 2015 Kenyan national XC champion Bedan Karoki (DeNA RC) at Hiroshima's Sera H.S. , Ndirangu sat near the rear of the lead pack through a relatively conservative 14:29 opening split on the 30 m uphill first 5 km.  As the downhill started Masato Kikuchi (Team Konica Minolta), the top non-African at last year's World Half Marathon Championships who ran an all-time Japanese #5 1:00:57 two weeks ago in Marugame, began to push the pace, covering the next 5 km in 14:19.  Ndirangu temporarily lost contact with the lead group in Kikuchi's wake but came back in a hurry, surging at 11 km to go to the front and break up the pack. Initially only Kikuchi and his teammate Keita Shitara (Team Konica Minolta), who likewise ran a PB 1:01:20 in Marugame two weeks ago, followed, but...

by Brett Larner A week after the National Women's Ekiden marked the end of the main women's championship ekiden season, 9 pro and university teams and 15 high school teams lined up for the 26th edition of the Kita-Kyushu Women's Ekiden , a 5-stage, 32.8 km race that features an 11.7 km anchor stage split into two for the high school runners.  Last year's winning anchor Misaki Kato got defending open division champion Kyudenko off to a good start with an 18-second lead on the 4.2 km First Stage, and after Kenyan Sally Chepyego was through with the 5.9 km Second Stage Kyudenko's lead was up to well over a minute, a margin they held for the rest of the race to take a second-straight win in 1:45:23. With a long streak of Kita-Kyushu wins behind it, defending H.S. division champion Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. got off to a slow start, 2nd among H.S. teams on the First Stage and more than 30 seconds behind Kato.  2014 National H.S. Ekiden champion Osaka Kunei Joshi Gaku...

by Brett Larner Japan's road season got into swing this weekend with two large road races and two competitive ekidens. At the Fukuoka Prefecture Road Championships in Omuta, Kyushu, Yuya Konishi  (Team Toyota Kyushu) won the 10-miler in 48:00, one of the fastest winning times on record at the race.  The rest of the top ten went under 48:30 as well, making for an outstanding tight race.   Sally Chepyego  (Kenya/Team Kyudenko) won the women's 5 km for the second year in a row and took advantage of the ideal temperatures to set a course record of 15:51.  Runner-up Yuka Miyazaki  was 44 seconds behind.  Local boy Yuki Koga  (Omuta H.S.) won the high school 10 km in 31:29. At the other end of the country, the Sapporo Half Marathon, not to be confused with July's Sapporo International Half Marathon, saw 12,003 finishers led by Toshiaki Nishizawa  (Komazawa Univ.) in 1:05:07 and Mika Sawa  (Bukkyo Univ.) in 1:16:10. Across the world, J...