japan running news

23-year-old Yuki Nakamura broke through to the upper levels of Japanese women's marathoning, taking over 6 minutes off her PB to win Australia's Gold Coast Marathon in a course record 2:24:22. Coming into the race with a best of only 2:30:31 from Nagoya in March, the night before the race Nakamura's coaching staff told JRN that her goal was to clear 2:26 and that she'd go with the lead group on 2:24 pace and see what she could do. Helped by a large group of men to break the wind, the pack of five soon shook down to just Nakamura, favorite Visiline Jepkesho of Kenya and 2:26 Ethiopian Sichala Kumeshi . Nakamura looked comfortable and under control, even like she was holding back, through the first 2/3 of the race. A move from Jepkesho before 30 km opened a 10 m gap between the two Africans and Nakamura, but Nakamura worked the small hill just after 31 km to catch back up and even go to the front. From there Nakamura threw in a series of surges, first breaking Kumeshi a...

  A JRN co-production with Maurten featuring Ai Ikemoto .

https://iau-ultramarathon.org/provisional-results-for-2023-iau-50-km-world-championships.html 100 km NR holder Jumpei Yamaguchi was the top Japanese male placer at 6th in 2:53:28, with Hiroki Kai 14th in 2:57:29. Mai Fujisawa was 9th in the women's race in 3:25:10, with Ai Ikemoto 19th in 3:42:40 in her debut at the distance.

At least three noteworthy international races had Japanese athletes in their fields this weekend. Fresh off his 6th-place finish at the Budapest World Championships, 3000 m steeplechase national record holder Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.) took 7th at Saturday's Xiamen Diamond League meet in China, running 8:18.32 to winner El Bakkali Soufiane 's 8:10.31. Also Saturday, Waseda University athletes Tomonori Yamaguchi , Haruto Ishizuka and Taishi Ito ran the Birell 10 km Road Race in Prague along with corporate leaguer Ryota Kondo (Toyota Boshoku). Both Yamaguchi and Ito ran faster than their track 10000 m PBs, Yamaguchi the top Japanese man at 8th in 29:13, Ishizuka 9th in 29:17, Kondo 10th in 29:28 and Ito 11th in 29:29. Japan-based Alexander Mutiso (ND Software) was 2nd in 27:48 behind Ethiopian Tadese Worku , 1st in 29:35. Sunday at Germany's Volksbank Muenster Marathon , Ai Ikemoto made her international marathon debut with a 4th-place finish in 2:41:30. "I wa...

by Brett Larner 【富士山女子駅伝】 立命館大学が3連覇達成！！ pic.twitter.com/KLGTRxDwgR — 日本学生陸上競技連合 (@iuauj) December 30, 2015 Despite coming up short of replicating its perfect win, six stage titles and the overall victory, at October's Morinomiyako Ekiden , two-time defending champion Ritsumeikan University 's dynasty proved unstoppable as it led start-to-finish to win the Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden national university title for the third year in a row. Having missed being part of the winning Morinomiyako team, Nanako Kanno , one half of Ritsumeikan's pair of top-level runners, led off with a 6-second lead on the steepest of the first four downhill stages, a lead that grew to 2:22 by the end of another strong run by second-year Kotona Ota , undefeated so far in her university ekiden career.  More dynamic racing happened further back in the field, where last year's runner-up Osaka Gakuin University , 4th-placer Meijo University and 5th-placer Matsuyama University exchanged pl...

by Brett Larner Four-time defending National University Women's Ekiden champion Ritsumeikan University delivered one for the record books, winning a fifth-straight title Sunday in Sendai as it broke the 38.0 km course record in 2:02:52.  With all six of its runners winning their individual stages including a 29:24 record for the 9.2 km Fifth Stage from Kotona Ota , the sheer quality of Ritsumeikan's win had fans talking on social media about the need for ekiden terminology like baseball's no-hitters and perfect games.  Regardless, this was about as dominant a performance as you could hope to see in an ekiden, every team member hitting it 100% running entirely alone with an unbreakable lead. Last year's runner up Daito Bunka University was 2nd again after a great battle throughout the race with Kanto Region rival Nittai University and Aichi's Meijo University , one of only two schools to crack Ritsumeikan in the last 12 years.  But despite good performances f...

by Brett Larner   High school track continued along the road to next month's National Championships with a nationwide round of regional championships this weekend.  Thirty-three girls across the country broke the 9:30 mark over 3000 m, with the fastest time of the weekend going to Kenyan Mary Waithira  (Sendai Ikuei H.S.), who set an impressive meet record of 9:00.85 at the Tohoku Regionals meet over Kenyan rival Rosemary Wanjiru  (Aomori Yamada H.S.), who ran 9:07.44.  The fastest performance by a Japanese girl came at the South Kanto Regionals meet, where Maki Izumida  (Hakuoh Joshi H.S.) won in 9:17.74.  All but three regions featured winning times under 9:30. Boys' performances were less noteworthy, but in the Tokai Region 5000 m Kenyan Jeremiah Karemi  (Toyokawa H.S.) set a meet record of 13:52.51.   Charles Ndungu (Sapporo Yamanote H.S.) also set a meet record in the Hokkaido Region 5000 m, running 13:57.81.  Both boys' a...