japan running news

by Brett Larner In a livestreamed press conference in Tokyo on Mar. 17 the JAAF announced the women's and men's marathon teams for this summer's London World Championships.  With four selection races each for the three spots on the women's and men's teams the JAAF went with the best balance they could have achieved between quality and fairness. Making the grade on the women's team were Nagoya Women's Marathon 2nd and 3rd-placers Yuka Ando (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) and Mao Kiyota (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) and Osaka International Women's Marathon winner Risa Shigetomo (Team Tenmaya), all three with PBs under 2:24.  Osaka runner-up Misato Horie (Team Noritz) was named alternate. On the men's side, the team consists of Fukuoka International Marathon 3rd-placer Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't), Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon winner Kentaro Nakamoto (Team Yasukawa Denki) and Tokyo Marathon 8th-placer Hiroto Inoue (Team MHPS).  All three have brok...

by Brett Larner The press conference announcing the Japanese women's and men's teams for August's London World Championships is set for this Friday.  It's a complicated selection process with four separate domestic races each to choose the three women and three men who will represent Japan in London. Essentially, any woman who had run under 2:22:30 or man under 2:07:00 within the selection window and took the top spot at one of the selection races would be on the team. Barring that, the JAAF would consider a pool of ten for each team, the top woman at last August's Hokkaido Marathon and the top three domestic women from November's Saitama International Marathon , January's Osaka International Women's Marathon and March's Nagoya Women's Marathon , and for men the top Japanese man at February's Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon and the top three from December's Fukuoka International Marathon , February's Tokyo Marathon and March...

by Brett Larner #名古屋ウィメンズマラソン 🥇キルワ 🇧🇭 2:21:17 =3連覇 🥈安藤 🇯🇵 2:21:36 #nagoyawomensmarathon pic.twitter.com/aVP3sVJg2Q — EKIDEN_MANIA (@ekiden_mania) March 12, 2017 Rio Olympics silver medalist, two-time defending champion and course record holder Eunice Kirwa (Bahrain) brought the race of her career to the Nagoya Women's Marathon .  And she needed to in order to win. Despite a fall at the start Kirwa was out strong, accompanied by the star first-timer of last year's Nagoya, Mao Kiyota (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC), her debuting teammate Yuka Ando , and the likewise debuting Hisami Ishii (Team Yamada Denki).  The 5 km split of 16:51 put them on track for 2:22:12, just under the JAAF's London World Championships auto-selection standard of 2:22:30, but when the pacers took it up to 16:25 for the next 5 km the pace got too hot for Kiyota and Ishii. Kiyota made a few brave attempts to get back on board but quickly lost touch for good.  Ando, 10th at last year's C...

19-year-old me watched Young-cho Hwang and Koichi Morishita race up Montjuic at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and said, "That's what I want to do." A year later I did my first marathon. Today I ran up Montjuic with them over the same 4 km that changed my life 25 years ago.  They were my original inspiration in wanting to run marathons and Morishita in particular was the person who first sparked my interest in and respect for Japanese distance running. I'll always be grateful to them for what they showed me as a teenager and for sharing the day with me today. Postscript: At dinner that night Morishita decided he wanted to run the first 11.5 km loop of the Barcelona Marathon the next morning.  We ran it together with Jose Esteban Montiel , a Spanish Olympian who finished 32nd in '92 and was doing his last marathon.  Morishita set the pace, going through 10 km in 44:49 before surging for the last km and a half.  Montiel and I stayed together on sub-3:10 p...

https://www.iaaf.org/news/preview/kirwa-targeting-three-peat-nagoya-womens-mara

(l to r) Koichi Morishita (Japan), Yuko Arimori (Japan), Valentina Yegorova (Russia), Young-cho Hwang (South Korea), Lorraine Moller (New Zealand) and Stephan Freigang (Germany) In the 25th anniversary year of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the organizers of the Zurich Barcelona Marathon invited all six marathon medalists back as guests of honor for Sunday's race.  JRN travelled to Barcelona with men's gold medalist Young-cho Hwang (South Korea), men's silver medalist Koichi Morishita (Japan) and women's silver medalist Yuko Arimori (Japan). Bronze medalist Moller, gold medalist Yegorova, and silver medalist Arimori in the Olympic Stadium. Gold medalist Hwang, silver medalist Morishita and bronze medalist Freigang at the Hwang monument in front of the Olympic Stadium. Yegorova and Arimori watch themselves battle to gold and silver 25 years removed. Hwang reflects on becoming one of his country's legends. The six medalists reunited, Hwa...

http://www.sanspo.com/smp/sports/news/20170306/ath17030605000001-s.html an editorial by Hiromi Taniguchi ,  1991 Tokyo World Championships marathon gold medalist and two-time Olympic marathoner translated by Brett Larner Yesterday's Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon was a pretty unremarkable race. Akinobu Murasawa and the other young athletes ran at 3:00/km pace in the lead group to 20 km, but at that point there were only 21 people left in the group and it looked like the more inexperienced athletes started to feel afraid somewhere along the way.   Tadashi Isshiki was the same way.  I think the pressure probably did him in before he even started running.  You have to value the experience level of Satoru Sasaki , who fell off pace midway but came back to take the top Japanese position, but in terms of his time it's tough to consider him. For the World Championships team, why not select the top three Japanese men from the Tokyo Marathon, Hiroto Inoue , Hiroyuki Y...

by Brett Larner video by Ekiden News 【学生ハーフ】 スタートしました！ユニバーシアードへの切符は誰の手に！？ pic.twitter.com/icWUjoqbc7 — 日本学生陸上競技連合 (@iuauj) March 5, 2017 Quickly rising to the top of university men's distance running this season with a 58:43 3rd-place finish at October's Hakone Ekiden qualifier 20 km and a 1:07:17 win on the 23.2 km Hakone Ekiden Second Stage, Kengo Suzuki (Kanagawa Univ.) ran the biggest race of his career to date with a course record-breaking 1:01:36 win at the 2017 National University Men's Half Marathon Championships in western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park. 1:01:25 man Naoki Kudo (Komazawa Univ.) took the race out at sub-61 pace, but after a 29:08 split at 10 km Suzuki got down to work.  Pushing the second half and pulling away alone, he became the first man to break 62 minutes at the National University Half, the deepest half marathon in the world with 265 finishers sub-66 in 2015.  Suzuki's finishing time of 1:01:36 made him the 7th-fastest Japanese-...