japan running news

On Sept. 1 the Asahi Kasei  men's corporate team announced on its social media that Yuki Iwai , 40, has been named assistant coach. A native of Chiba, Iwai was the top Japanese finisher and 2nd overall in the 2000 National High School Championships 5000 m while at Narita H.S.  The same year he also took 2nd in the Junior 5000 m at the National Sports Festival. At Nihon University  Iwai became a regular on its starting ekiden team right from the season-opening Izumo Ekiden his first year, helping lead Nihon to win Izumo a year later. His fourth year he ran the Hakone Ekiden's highly competitive Second Stage, placing a strong 6th. At Asahi Kasei Iwai won the 10000 m at the 2009 National Championships. His time of 28:19.25 cleared the qualifying standard for that summer's Berlin World Championships, where he represented Japan. After that he suffered a series of injuries that led to his retirement after the 2014 National Corporate Half Marathon. He became a regular office wor...

by Brett Larner Regional qualification for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships wrapped up Nov. 23 in Fukuoka with the 50th edition of the Kyushu Jitsugyodan Ekiden .  Driven by a mid-race stage win by this year's fastest Japanese marathoner, 2:08:00 man  Kazuhiro Maeda , and a new stage record by Moscow World Championships 10000 m bronze medalist Paul Tanui , the Kyudenko  team covered the seven-stage, 78.8 km ekiden in a course record 3:50:36 to take the win over favorites Asahi Kasei  and Toyota Kyushu . Strong in the early going, the relatively minor Mitsubishi Juko Nagasaki  and Kurosaki Harima  teams led for the first three stages, Kyudenko close behind but Asahi Kasei and Toyota Kyushu, running without its four best men including New York City Marathon 6th-placer Masato Imai , getting off to a slow start.  Down 1 second on Mitsubishi Juko Nagasaki and 46 seconds on leader Kurosaki Harima at the handoff, Maeda wen...

by Brett Larner photos by Kazuyuki Sugimatsu videos by Ekiden News The 232nd edition of 2013 Hakone Ekiden champion Nittai University 's regular time trial meet series was the biggest on record.  After a Saturday dedicated to distances ranging from 800 m to 10000 m, Sunday dawned early for 45 heats of 5000 m, 42 for men and 3 for women, the first starting at 7:30 a.m. and the last at 9:20 p.m.  Mass-producing quality, the 5000 m heats averaged 42 runners each with the two largest having 48 finishers.  Late in the day the heats were beginning every 15 minutes like clockwork.  Performances were equally deep, with the women's 5000 m A-heat seeing the most women ever under 16:30, 38, and the men's 5000 m A-heat with 30 under 14:05 falling just short of the record of 33. The performance of the weekend went to 20-year-old Meiji University junior Genki Yagisawa , a former high school star who has so far struggled to live up to expectations on the university e...

http://kumanichi.com/lsports/kiji/20121128001.shtml translated by Brett Larner The 37th Kumamoto Kosa 10-Miler takes place this Sunday, Dec. 2.  In the main race of the day, the Japanese-only open division, there is no shortage of exciting competition on tap with top corporate and university runners squaring off over 10 miles (16.093 km). 133 Japanese men make up the open division.  Among the major contenders for the victory are 2010 winner Ryuji Watanabe  (Team Toyota Kyushu) fresh from winning three stages at the Grand Tour Kyushu ekiden, and this year's 5000 m national champion Kazuya Deguchi  (Team Asahi Kasei).  Invited athletes  Kazuharu Takai  (Team Kyudenko), Tomohiro Shiiya  (Team Toyota Boshoku) and Yusuke Hasegawa  (Team S&B) are also likely to be caught up in the action. Noteworthy locals include defending champion Yuki Iwai  (Team Asahi Kasei), 2:08:38 marathoner Kazuhiro Maeda  (Team Kyudenko), 2012...

by Brett Larner all photos by Dr. Helmut Winter Update: Last year's 4th place finisher Yoshinori Oda (Team Toyota) has withdrawn with lower back pain problems. The most anticipated Japanese marathon in years is here.  The second of three Japanese men's selection races for the London Olympics, the 2012 Tokyo Marathon looks set to get them back on track with the fast times that have dried up since Beijing.  The women's race is competitive despite an almost total absence of elite Japanese women, and former marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie is slated to try for what would undoubtedly be his final Olympic appearance. It's going to be a big day, and the weather looks good at this stage. You can follow along with Nihon TV's broadcast via Keyhole TV or via JRN's live Twitter commentary @JRNLive , both beginning at 9:00 a.m. Japan time on Sunday. Going for 2:25, Eri Okubo (Second Wind AC). Looking first at the women's race, it seems s...

http://www.iaaf.org/Mini/LRR12/News/NewsDetail.aspx?id=63475 To Ken Nakamura's preview of Sunday's 66th Kagawa Marugame International Half Marathon I would add mention of sub-28 World Championships 10000 m runner Yuki Iwai  (Team Asahi Kasei) tuning up for his marathon debut at the Tokyo Marathon after a good New Year Ekiden run, and the crop of top Hakone Ekiden university runners in the field.   Keita Shitara  (Toyo Univ.) is the most worth watching, making his official half marathon debut after having run 1:08:04 on the 23.2 km Second Stage at Hakone, equivalent to a 1:01:54 half marathon at a flat conversion.  Last year's #2 Japanese half marathoner, Hiromitsu Kakuage  (Komazawa Univ.) returns along with his teammate, Hakone Ekiden Ninth Stage winner Shinobu Kubota ,, whose 1:09:04 clocking for 23.2 km at Hakone suggests mid-62 capability.  Waseda University's strong Shuhei Yamamoto and Hiroyuki Sasaki  are scheduled to make their half maratho...

http://kumanichi.com/news/local/main/20111204005.shtml translated by Brett Larner At the Rikuren-certified 36th annual Kumamoto Kosa 10 Mile Road Race on Dec. 4, 2009 World Championships 10000 m runner Yuki Iwai  (Team Asahi Kasei) ran 47:08 to win for the second time, five years after his first win.  In the international division, Martin Mathathi  (Kenya/Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) won his third-straight and sixth-total Kosa title in 46:20. With the international division starting together with the general division for the first time, Mathathi picked up the pace at the halfway mark.  Iwai went with him, leaving all over Japanese runners behind.  He slowed dramatically near the end but still held off 2nd-place Kenichi Shiraishi  (Team Asahi Kasei) by 9 seconds.   Kohei Matsumura  (Team Mitsubishi Juko Nagasaki) was 3rd. Daegu World Championships marathoner Hiroyuki Horibata  (Team Asahi Kasei) started off in the lead pack, but he fell behind...

2010 Kyushu Jitsugyodan Ekiden Fukuoka-Kitakyushu, 11/23/10 click here for complete results Stage Best Performances 1st Stage (13.4 km) - Masato Imai (Team Toyota Kyushu) - 40:22 2nd Stage (10.2 km) - Satoru Sasaki (Team Asahi Kasei) - 31:20 3rd Stage (10.5 km) - Kazuhiro Maeda (Team Kyudenko) - 28:55 4th Stage (12.2 km) - Tomoya Onishi (Team Asahi Kasei) - 35:36 5th Stage (8.7 km) - Paul Tanui (Kenya/Team Kyudenko) - 24:50 6th Stage (9.6 km) - Kenichi Shiraishi (Team Asahi Kasei) - 28:17 7th Stage (14.2 km) - Yuki Iwai (Team Asahi Kasei) - 41:35 Top Team Results - 78.8 km 1. Team Asahi Kasei - 3:53:33 2. Team Yasukawa Denki - 3:55:38 3. Team Kyudenko - 3:57:47

by Brett Larner With 8 individual day wins and 37 single-stage victories, Miyazaki prefecture easily took down defending champion Fukuoka prefecture to win the 10-day, 72-stage, 1056.6 Kyushu Isshu Ekiden . The Tour de France of Japanese distance running, the Kyushu Isshu Ekiden consists of one loop of the coast of Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu beginning in Nagasaki, heading south, turning and heading north through Miyazaki, and ending in Fukuoka. Miyazaki's team was made up almost entirely of runners from the Asahi Kasei corporate team based in the prefecture. 2010 World Half Marathon 9th placer Tomoya Onishi led the way, winning all three of his stages including a sizzling 43:55 stage record for the 15.3 km Day Three Fourth Stage. First-year Asahi Kasei member Takuya Fukatsu also won all his stages, as did veteran marathoner Tomoyuki Sato , 2009 World Championships 10000 m runner Yuki Iwai and the solid Satoru Sasaki . Olympian Ryuji Ono , out for the entire y...

by Brett Larner Thanks to an all-star lineup of top Kyushu-based jitsugyodan aces, Miyazaki prefecture took a commanding 5 1/2 minute lead on the first day of the 59th Kyushu One-Circuit Ekiden , an epic 10-day, 72-stage, 1056.6 km road relay deep in tradition. First-year Team Asahi Kasei member and Komazawa University graduate Takuya Fukatsu got Miyazaki off to a good start with a 16-second win on the First Stage. Miyazaki's only challenge came from 13:18/27:41 man Yu Mitsuya of Fukuoka prefecture, who clipped Miyazaki by one second to put Fukuoka into the lead on the Second Stage. 2009 World Championships 10000 m runner Yuki Iwai put Miyazaki back into the lead on the Third Stage and from there it was smooth sailing for the rest of the day until Miyazaki's Hiroyuki Horibata brought the team home in first. Days Two and Three promise to be a challenging effort for the runners as Japan is expected to be in the grip of a typhoon throughout the weekend. 2010 Kyushu Isshu Ekide...

http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/asahi/jp/csr/sports/rikujo/result/2010/100723.html translated by Brett Larner We're deep in the heart of summer gashuku season, when Japan's high school, university and corporate teams relocate to the northern island of Hokkaido, the mountains of Nagano or elsewhere to beat the heat and focus on building a base for the upcoming fall ekiden season and the subsequent winter marathon season. Team Asahi Kasei, the best corporate team on the southern island of Kyushu, recently posted the following report about its gashuku in the mountains of Oita prefecture on its website. Click photos for full-sized versions or the link above for more pictures. Asahi Kasei's annual mountain gashuku got underway July 15 in the Chojabaru region near Kokonoemachi, Oita prefecture. Morning temperatures are around 17-18 degrees. While midday temperatures can get up to 30 degrees in the evening they fall to 23-25 degrees, leaving ample chance for the entire team to get it...

by Brett Larner The 2010 Japanese National Track and Field Championships got underway June 4 in Marugame, Kagawa prefecture. At stake for competitors this year are places on the Japanese national team for November's Asian Games. The first day of competition saw the women's and men's 10000 m. In the women's 10000 m, multiple past national champion Kayoko Fukushi (Team Wacoal) returned to the top for the first time in three years. Fukushi ran the entire race alone and unchallenged, taking it out in 3:06 for the first km with no one even near. Fukushi finished in 31:47.56, her closest competition over half a lap behind as Ryoko Kizaki (Team Daihatsu) came 2nd in 32:31.64. Defending champion Yukiko Akaba (Team Hokuren), still working her way back from a marathon PB in London at the end of April, was 3rd in 32:36.32. The men's 10000 m was more dramatic if slower. Young pro Naoki Okamoto (Team Chugoku Denryoku) and university star Ryuji Kashiwabara (Toyo Univ.) alte...

by Brett Larner The first race of the year kicks off just hours into the first day: the Japanese corporate men's national championship New Year Ekiden . 100 km split into seven stages, the New Year Ekiden is broadcast live nationwide. Now in its 54th year, it has become the main focus of the year for professional Japanese men, with October and November's regional qualifying ekidens taking the place of a fall marathon and, this year, the drive to promote team sponsors pushing the New Year Ekiden ahead of the great Fukuoka International Marathon. Questionable as this may be, the New Year Ekiden is where you see the peak performances happening. On the ekiden's longest leg, the 22.3 km Fourth Stage on the current course, top men such as Keita Akiba (Team Komori Corp.), Takayuki Matsumiya (Team Konica Minolta) and Yu Mitsuya (Team Toyota Kyushu) have run times equivalent to a sub-hour half marathon, well ahead of the official national record. You rarely see the big Japanese n...

by Brett Larner There’s no getting around the hard facts: 2009 was one of the worst years in the modern history of Japanese men’s marathoning. In a time when the world standard has undergone remarkable improvement with the ten fastest times of the year under 2:06 for the first time, Japanese men took a large step backwards. Only one Japanese man, Atsushi Sato (Team Chugoku Denryoku), broke 2:10 this year, the first time this has happened since 1996. The average of the top ten Japanese times of the year, 2:11:21, was also the slowest since 1996. Relative to the world top ten average, 2:05:13, the year was Japan’s worst-ever. To be fair, Japan did manage to take the team bronze medal at the Berlin World Championships, and all three of this year’s major Japanese spring marathons suffered windy conditions, in the case of March’s Tokyo Marathon verging on the extreme. There have also been troughs in the record before when the aging stars of one generation pass their prime before the next h...

by Brett Larner Sunday's Fukuoka International Marathon isn't the only major race happening on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu that day. Across the island in Kumamoto is the 34th Kumamoto Kosa 10 Mile Road Race . What the Ageo City Half Marathon is to half marathons, Kumamoto Kosa is to 10-milers: the deepest, toughest in the world . Where Ageo sees university men lining up by the hundreds to prove to their coaches that they are worthy of running in the Hakone Ekiden, Japan's corporate jitsugyodan runners do Kumamoto Kosa as a selection and tune-up race for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden national championships. Almost everybody who's not running Fukuoka is on the starting line. It's a Japanese-only time trial, thank you very much, as foreign runners are politely given a one-minute head start and scored in a separate "International Division" even though all are based in Japan and run for the same teams as the Japanese runners. Looking at the...

Click here to enter JRN's World Championships marathon prediction contest for a chance to win a 2009 Japanese national team singlet. by Brett Larner 2009 men's 10000 m national champion Yuki Iwai ran in the 10000 m on the third day of the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. Having experienced problems with his right Achilles tendon since winning the national title in June, Iwai was visibly wincing during his warmup and while stretching on the starting line and he fared accordingly in the race. In last place in the field of 30 after only a lap, Iwai soon lost contact with the group and was overtaken by the leaders twice in the course of the race which saw winner Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia set a new World Championships record of 26:46.31, all three medalists break 27 minutes, and the top 14 set season or lifetime bests. In light of Rikuren's questionable decision to omit 27:38 runner Yuki Sato from the team Iwai was the sole Japanese runner, and unlike the five athletes who...

by Brett Larner Despite Japan's outstanding record of three gold, four silver and five bronze medals in the marathon over the last nine World Championships, there is no escaping the harsh reality that Masako Chiba's bronze in the women's 10000 at the 1997 Athens World Championships is its only track distance event hardware. There may be little chance of any of the eight runners Japan will send to the 5000 m, 10000 m and 3000 mSC at this year's Berlin World Championships finishing in the medals or even making the finals, but the team nevertheless features several compelling young athletes worth keeping an eye on. Below is a quick guide to the members of the Japanese distance squad listed by event. All times and dates listed are local Berlin time. Women's 3000 mSC - Heats: 10:50 a.m., 8/15 - Final: 8:30 p.m., 8/17 Nearly 37, Minori Hayakari is the oldest runner in the field by a wide margin but has continued to improve over the last few years, a memorable fall at t...

by Brett Larner Stanford University's Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational holds a special place in the Japanese record books, being the meet where both the current men's and women's 10000 m national records were set. Last year 5000 m national record holder Takayuki Matsumiya (Team Konica Minolta) fell just short of breaking the 10000 m national record, with Satoshi Irifune (Team Kanebo) a short distance back, likewise clearing the 28-minute mark. This year Irifune was slated to run again, but the outbreak of the swine flu pandemic caused Team Kanebo management to pull him at the last minute. The decision left seven mostly young, lesser-known Japanese runners to compete in three events. Hiroyoshi Umegae (Team NTN) was first up in the men's 3000 m SC. Running a stable pace in the middle of the pack Umegae appeared to be on course for a slim PB and even looked to be advancing in the final km, but he faded over the final lap and lost seven places to come home in 14th in 8:...

The 2009 Stanford University Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational will be webcast live on Flotrack . Assuming that no more withdraw out of swine flu hysteria, the following races will feature Japanese distance runners. Italicized races do not include any Japanese athletes but are likely to be interesting. All times are Japan time on Sunday, May 3. Click here for a complete timetable. Women's 3000 m SC Section 1: 10:38 a.m. Men's 3000 m SC Section 1: 11:02 a.m. - Hiroyoshi Umegae Women's 5000 m Section 1: 12:34 p.m. Men's 5000 m Section 1: 12:52 p.m. - Suehiro Ishikawa and Yuichiro Ueno Women's 10000 m Section 1: 1:08 p.m. Men's 10000 m Section 1 : 1:45 p.m. - Tomoaki Bungo, Seigo Ikegami, Yuki Iwai and Yoshinori Oda

http://kumanichi.com/news/local/main/20090222003.shtml http://www.hokkaido-np.co.jp/news/sports/148677.html http://www.nishinippon.co.jp/nsp/item/78969 translated and edited by Brett Larner At the Rikuren-certified Kinaguri Memorial Kumanichi 30 km Road Race in Kumamoto, Kyushu on Feb. 22, Yu Mitsuya of Team Toyota Kyushu, was victorious in his debut at the distance, winning in a time of 1:29:55. Enduring a slow first 10 km in 30:08, Mitsuya ran in the lead pack until 22 km where he attacked with a strong spurt. He broke away from pursuer Yoshinori Oda of Team Toyota just before 27 km and ran alone to the finish in a successful test run for his planned marathon debut next season. "My legs got pretty heavy after 28 km," Mitsuya said afterwards. "I've gotta train more." Having won his own debut marathon at the 1991 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon to qualify for the Barcelona Olympics where he won the silver medal, Mitsuya's coach Koichi Morishita gave him passin...