japan running news

Start lists are up for tomorrow's National University Men's Ekiden Championships.  Below is a quick guide to the top entrants on each of the eight stages.  The race will be broadcast live on TV Asahi beginning at 8:00 a.m. Japan time.  Overseas viewers should be able to watch online for free via Keyhole TV .  Follow @JRNLive for live English commentary on Twitter.   Click here for JRN's race preview . First Stage (14.6 km) 1-1: Shuhei Yamamoto (Waseda Univ.) 2-1: Hiromitsu Kakuage (Komazawa Univ.) 3-1: Keita Shitara (Toyo Univ.) 4-1: Hirotaka Tamura (Nihon Univ.) 5-1: Tsubasa Hayakawa (Tokai Univ.) 12-1: Takamitsu Hashimoto (Josai Univ.) 15-1: Shun Sato (Jobu Univ.) 23-1: Kiragu Njuguna (Daiichi Kogyo Univ./Kenya) Second Stage (13.2 km) 1-2: Suguru Osako (Waseda Univ.) 2-2: Kenta Murayama (Komazawa Univ.) 3-2: Yuta Shitara (Toyo Univ.) 4-2: Naohiro Domoto (Nihon Univ.) 6-2: Tetsuya Yoroizaka (Meiji Univ.) 10-2: Takehiro Deki (Aoyama Gakuin Uni...

http://www.plus-blog.sportsnavi.com/tokaisports/article/672 translated by Brett Larner At the Oct. 10 Izumo Ekiden, Tokai University long distance ace junior  Akinobu Murasawa  finished 2nd on the anchor stage.  Five days later he went for the 27:45 Olympic 10000 m A-standard at the Shizuoka Time Trials meet but came up short as he ran only 28:19.67.  Murasawa feels the impact of the double disappointment and talked to us about how it motivates him for the rest of the season. This year was your first time running the Izumo Ekiden.  You were 2nd on the anchor stage and put Tokai into 4th.  How do you feel looking back on these results? Murasawa: We didn't reach our goal of a top three finish because I couldn't run the way I should have.  The fact that I was 2nd on the stage just proves that I wasn't 100%.  As far as the rest of the ekiden season goes, that race taught me a lesson. What lesson is that? When I couldn't see the gap to the ru...

by Brett Larner It's no secret that this year's National University Men's Ekiden Championships , the second of the season's big three university men's ekidens following last month's Izumo Ekiden, is going to be between the top three finishers at last January's Hakone Ekiden: defending national champion and course record holder Waseda University , Izumo winner Toyo University , and titan Komazawa University .  Both Waseda and Toyo had Japan's best-ever university squads last year, each with ten men sporting 10000 m PBs under 29 minutes.  Waseda's team this year is at the same level on paper thanks in part to ace sophomore  Suguru Osako 's continued development and the recruitment of sub-29 first-year Shuhei Yamamoto , but the chronic Waseda injury cycle seems to have returned this fall as the team was far from 100% at Izumo and was easily beaten there by both Toyo and Komazawa.  Toyo lost more to graduation this year than Waseda, but despite bot...

by Brett Larner The East Japan regional qualifiers for December's National Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden Championships and the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden men's national corporate championships took place Nov. 3 in Saitama, northwest of Tokyo.  Run in perfect conditions, there were new records on five of the seven men's stages and four of the six women's stages with the winning men's team just three seconds off the overall course record. 27:38 man Yuki Sato  (Team Nissin Shokuhin) set the tone for the day, taking 52 seconds off the record for the 11.6 km first stage and winning by a margin of 36 seconds after leading wire to wire.  The entire field was aggressive, with the top nine all clearing the old stage record of 33:52.    27:41 man Tsuyoshi Ugachi  (Team Konica Minolta) nearly closed the gap on the 15.3 km second stage, coming within 10 seconds of leader Hiroyuki Ono  (Team Nissin Shokuhin) and breaking his own stage record by 21 seconds. Much of t...

by Brett Larner In its 60th running the historic Kyushu Isshu Ekiden , a ten-day road relay around Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu featuring men's teams from each of the island's nine prefectures, has changed both name and, to a lesser degree, format.  Now called the Grand Tour Kyushu, the race has been scaled back to eight days and, styled more after a cycling race, has a new and heavier emphasis on the day-to-day stage wins and features corporate sponsorship of the individual day stages. Starting in Nagasaki on Oct. 30 and heading counterclockwise to Fukuoka, the Grand Tour Kyushu remains Japan's longest elite-level event.  Always dominant thanks to the presence of a large concentration of corporate teams, Fukuoka, Miyazaki and Nagasaki prefectures have been the main players through the Tour's first four days.  Defending champion Miyazaki got off on the right foot with a win from rookie Kazuya Deguchi  on the first leg of the race, but the team fell...

by Brett Larner The East Japan regional qualifiers for December's National Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden Championships and the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships take place Nov. 3 in Saitama.  Both the women's and men's races feature some of the top talent in Japan, including World Championships women's marathon runners Yukiko Akaba  (Team Hokuren), Azusa Nojiri  (Team Daiichi Seimei) and Yoshimi Ozaki  (Team Daiichi Seimei) and track aces Kasumi Nishihara  (Team Yamada Denki),  Yuki Sato  (Team Nissin Shokuhin) and Tsuyoshi Ugachi  (Team Konica Minolta).  Particularly noteworthy in the men's race is the return to ekiden action of Daegu World Championships 10000 m world champion Ibrahim Jeilan  (Team Honda), who will face Kenyan rivals Clement Langat  (Team Subaru),  Josephat Ndambiri (Team Komori Corp.), Jonathan Ndiku  (Team Hitachi Cable) and  Gideon Ngatuny  (Team Nissin Shokuhin). ...

http://www.sannichi.co.jp/kyodo/news2.php?genre=Sports&newsitemid=2011110101000535 translated and edited by Brett Larner Athens Olympics women's marathon gold medalist and national record holder Mizuki Noguchi  (Team Sysmex) left Nov. 1 from Osaka International Airport for an altitude training camp in Boulder, Colorado.  The goal of Noguchi's training camp is to strengthen her condition ahead of January's Osaka International Women's Marathon which she will run to earn a place on the London Olympic team.  "I'm excited to get away and focus," she said of her mental state before leaving Osaka.  "I want to build up a good distance base while I'm there." Noguchi made a successful return to racing at the West Japan Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden late last month, ten months after her latest round of injuries.  She plans to run a race in Holland this month and to return to Japan before the end of the year.* * Translator's note: Source...

http://www.pjnews.net/news/291/20111030_2 translated and edited by Brett Larner Stretching from Osaka City Hall to the south part of Osaka Bay, 27,000 runners took part in Kansai's first mass-participation marathon, the Oct. 30 Osaka Marathon.  With a surge at 30 km  Elijah Sang  (Kenya) became the race's first champion, winning in 2:12:43.  In post-race comments Sang told the media, "I think this will be a very fast course.  The cheering was incredibly loud, so I never got tired or had to back off.  Things went as planned and I made a move at 30 km.  I was able to win because I was running for the win." Veteran  Lidia Simon  (Romania) won the women's race in 2:32:48.  "The course is an easy one without any difficult sections," she said, "but I had trouble maintaining my speed after the turnaround.  I wasn't able to hit my target of a sub-2:30 time, but I did manage to achieve my other goal of winning.  My next goal will ...