japan running news

Conditions weren't fantastic at the Tokyo Marathon , a bit too warm and sunny, a bit too windy, a lot too much cedar pollen in the air, but it was still a record-breaking day. Except for a race-morning DNS from men's NR holder Tomoki Suzuki there weren't any surprises in the wheelchair races, where world record holders Catherine Debrunner and Marcel Hug of Switzerland scored solo wins, Debrunner outgunning training partner and all-time #2 Eden Rainbow-Cooper by 4 minutes and Hug winning by 7 minutes in 1:21:09. The women's marathon was a slow burner, starting behind target pace on track for 2:17:00 at 5 km but ramping up all the way to the finish. CR holder and 2-time defending champ Sutume Asefa Kebede and 2022 champion / former WR holder Brigid Kosgei stayed side-by-side the entire way, shadowed by a pack of Ethiopians that dwindled down to just Bertukan Welde . The projected finish got closer and closer to Sutume's 2:15:55 CR, then past it and into 2:14 te...

At the 65th Karatsu 10-Mile Road Race Sunday in Karatsu, Saga, Shota Nakano (Honda) won in 47:30. Nakano graduated from Hiroshima's Sera H.S. before joining Chuo University . He ran the Hakone Ekiden three years in a row beginning his 2nd year at Chuo, winning the Third Stage his 3rd year. After graduating last spring he joined Honda, where he set a 1500 m PB of 3:41.47 at September's National Corporate Track and Field Championships. His other PBs include 13:24.11 for 5000 m, 28:00.86 for 10000 m and 1:02:49 for the half marathon. This was his first time racing the 10-mile distance. Yushin Akatsu (Komori Corp.) was 2 seconds behind Nakano in 47:32, with Daiki Nomimura (NTT Nishi Nihon) 3rd in 47:33 and veteran Keita Shitara (Nishitetsu) 4th in 47:35. Chikako Mori (Sekisui Kagaku) took the women's 10 km in 34:12 and Shiena Kanamori (Chikushi Joshi Gakuen H.S.) the high school girls' 5 km in 16:22. Taiyo Iwasa (Tosu Kogyo H.S.) won the high school boys' 10 km ...

Shunsuke Shikama (Logisteed), Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) and Chikako Mori (Sekisui Kagaku) won close races to take the National Corporate Half Marathon and 10 km Championships titles Sunday in Yamaguchi. In the men's race, Shikama was head-to-head with 2024 New Year Ekiden First Stage winner Naoki Ota (Yakult), the entire way, together at 5km, 10km, 20 km, and breaking away together from the rest of the front pack coming into the stadium. In a sprint finish both runners clocked 1:00:41, with Shikama taking the win. Ota joined his older brother Tomoki Ota (Toyota) in breaking 61 minutes for the half, with Koki Kamata (Yakult) 3rd in 1:00:47 and the top 10 breaking 61 minutes. The third major Japanese half marathon in 3 weeks, depth was solid with 37 under 62 minutes, 85 under 63 minutes and 111 under 64. One prominent DNF was 2017 runner-up Joseph Macharia Ndirangu (Aichi Seiko), 14:47 at 5 km and 29:45 at 10 km but not making it to the 15 km mat. The lack of t...

Thursday's Edion Distance Challenge meet at Osaka's Nagai Stadium will be streamed live starting at 11:50 a.m. local time. The program includes 3 heats of men's 5000 m, 2 heats of women's 3000 m, 5 heats of women's 5000 m and 2 heats of women's 10000 m. Given that the 10000 m national championships are happening Sunday, the women's 5000 m fast heat is the top race of the day. Its field has 8 Kenyan women, 1 Ethiopian, and 17 Japanese women, with the fastest being: Tabitha Njeri Kamau (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) - 14:48.26 Judy Jepngetich Chepaskwony (Shiseido) - 14:50.20 Agnes Mwikali Mutuku (Kyocera) - 14:51.35 Esther Muthoni (Nitori) - 14:58.03 Top Japanese entrants include Yuma Yamamoto and Chikako Mori of last month's Queens Ekiden national champ Sekisui Kagaku . Complete start lists and the meet program . © 2023 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Sumire Hata moved up a level globally with a 6.97 m +0.5 m/s Japanese national record to win the women's long jump gold medal on day 3 of the Bangkok Asian Athletics Championships. Already in first with a 6.74 m +1.7 m/s jump in the 4th round, Hata closed with the 6.97 m jump, the 4th-furthest in the world so far this year, to increase her margin over silver medalist Shaili Singh of India to 0.43 m. Bronze medalist Jiawei Zhong was another 8 cm back at 6.46 m. Another big gold came in the men's 100 m, where Hiroki Yanagita followed up on his 10.10 PB in the first round with a dominating 10.02 +0.0 m/s for gold, winning by 0.17 and moving up to all-time Japanese #7. National champion Ryuichiro Sakai was 6th in 10.26. With many of the main names in Japanese men's spring struggling this season as they hit mid and late career phases, Yanagita's jump up in performance couldn't have come at a better time. Still another was in the men's 110 mH. Shunya Takayama was...

As expected the senior men's 5000 m was the race of the day at the start of Japan's 107th National Track and Field Championships and 39th U20 National Championships . 10 mile WB holder Benard Koech (Kyudenko) held the pace steady at exactly 2:40/km through 3000 m, too much for NR holder Suguru Osako (GMO) who dropped out shortly after that. The pace slowed to 2:46 for the 4th km, prompting steeplechase Olympian Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu) to launch a long surge, 2:33 for the last 1000 m and 60' for the last lap, that carried him to the win in 13:19.85. Indoor 5000 m NR holder Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Denko) and Kanta Shimizu (Subaru) closed in the final 200 m but were too far back, two-time national champ Endo taking 2nd in 13:20.84 and Shimizu 3rd in a PB 13:21.18. U20 NR holder Keita Sato (Komazawa Univ.) started conservatively and spent most of the race moving up through the field. Out of range when Endo and Shimizu went, Sato showed the influence of workouts he learned ...

Always a big draw on the springtime Japanese schedule, this year's Payton Jordan Invitational at California's Stanford University produced year-leading Japanese women's 5000 m and 10000 m marks. In the 5000 m, 2018 National Corporate Road 10 km Championships winner Yui Fukuda (Toyota Jidoshokki) ran 15:20.08 for 8th overall to replace Minami Yamanouchi (Kyocera) on top the 5000 m list. In the 10000 m, Mao Ichiyama (Wacoal) returned from placing as the top Japanese woman at March's World Half Marathon Championships to finish 5th overall in 31:57.91, the first Japanese woman to break 32 minutes so far this year. On the men's side, after a solid run at December's Fukuoka International Marathon the U.S.-based Suguru Osako (Nike Oregon Project) passed on a springtime marathon in favor of a shot at the Japanese national record in the 10000 m. At Stanford Osako came up short, dropping out just after 6000 m. In the 1500 m, Hiroki Matsueda (Fujitsu) continued...

Hyogo   Prefecture dominated the second half of Sunday’s National Women’s Ekiden , moving up through the field with three straight stage wins to take its first national title in 14 years. In a repeat of her performance at last month’s National High School Ekiden, Hyogo’s Nozomi Tanaka went out front early before getting run down late in the opening stage, leading Hyogo off in 5th. Over the first half of the race the perpetually strong Osaka and Nagano emerged as the frontrunners before a brilliant Fourth Stage course record by Ririka Hironaka brought Nagasaki into the picture. Nagasaki’s fifth runner Chikako Mori extended the lead Hironaka built to 37 seconds with a stage win, but behind her Hyogo’s Mai Ota brought a big run to pass Osaka and Nagano and move into 2nd. A stage win from sixth runner Yume Goto put Hyogo just 2 seconds behind Nagasaki, and with another pair of stage wins from its next two runners Chinatsu Tarumoto and Asuka Ishimatsu Nagasaki was over ...

Running her track 10000 m debut of a 32:27 road 10 km in the spring, Kaori Morita (Panasonic) closed hard off a slow opening pace to win the National Corporate Federation Women's Long Distance Time Trials 10000 m Friday afternoon in Yamaguchi. A new filler meet to take up space on the calendar following the National Corporate Women's Ekiden 's move to November, the Corporate Time Trials meet featured one heat of 3000 m and three 5000 m heats before its main focus, the 10000 m. After a 3:19 first 1000 m Morita's teammate Yuka Hori , winner of the 10.9 km Third Stage at Nationals, took over, leading the field at 3:12 to 3:14 / km pace through 7000 m. Morita, who won the 7.0 km First Stage, went to the front at that point with a 3:14 to 8000 m before taking off. Clocking her fastest split up to that point with a 3:07 between 8 and 9000 m, Morita closed impressively with a 3:01 final km to dip under 32 minutes as she won in 31:59.94. Steepler Chikako Mori (Sekisui K...

Over 20,000 fans packed Osaka's Yanmar Stadium Nagai Saturday to try to catch a piece of history on the second day of the 101st Japanese National Track and Field Championships . After a red-hot round of men's 100 m heats and sufficiently fiery semi finals led by 18-year old Abdul Hakim Sani Brown (Tokyo T&F Assoc.) and backed by Rio Olympics 4x100 m relay silver medal trio Yoshihide Kiryu (Toyo Univ.), Ryota Yamagata (Seiko) and Aska Cambridge (Nike) plus 20-year-old newcomer Shuhei Tada (Kwansei Gakuin Univ.) there was an expectation in the air for Japan's first sub-10 clocking almost as heavy as the approaching storm front. With conditions improving throughout the late afternoon and into the early evening ahead of the 8:38 p.m. start time for the 100 m final all signals looked go.  Then, in the last km of the women's 3000 m SC two events before the 100 m, a few drops of rain. A light drizzle during the men's 400 m final. Then, in the ten minutes be...

by Brett Larner The third installment in Japan's midsummer Hokuren Distance Challenge time trials series took place July 11 in Abashiri, Hokkaido, the last day for athletes to turn in qualifying times for next month's Rio de Janeiro Olympics.  With the long distance squads already mostly set the only events with people seriously contending for Rio were the women's 3000 m steeplechase and men's 800 m, where National Championships runners-up Chikako Mori (Team Sekisui Kagaku) and Masato Yokota (Team Fujitsu) tried a final time to get under the 9:45.00 and 1:46.00 standards.  Both came up well short, Mori running 10:00.23 to win the steeple and Yokota just 1:49.28 for 4th in the 800 m. Which is not to say that the day was slow overall.  With ideal conditions the distance events were fast across the board, and in both the women's 5000 m and men's 10000 m there were new year-leading Japanese marks.  Risa Yokoe (Team Toyota Jidoshokki) won the women's 5000...

by Brett Larner Although Japanese men largely stayed away from Stanford University's Payton Jordan Invitational this year, three more women picked up qualifying marks for this year's Beijing World Championships.  In the 10000 m, Yuka Takashima (Team Denso) improved on her qualifying mark with a 31:37.32 best for 4th, while behind her teammates Mao Kiyota and Eri Makikawa (both Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) ran 31:44.79 and 31:48.22 to expand the list of candidates for the Beijing team to six.  5000 m national champion Misaki Onishi (Team Sekisui Kagaku) likewise ran a best of 15:16.82 to get under the 15:20.00 Beijing standard, bringing that list of candidates up to three.   Men's 10000 m national champion Yuki Sato (Team Nissin Shokuhin) duly turned in the top men's performance of the day, a 27:57.13 that made him the first Japanese man this year to break 28 but still left him far off the sub-27:45.00 Beijing standard. Payton Jordan Invitational Stanford, Californ...

by Brett Larner Cloudless skies, a fresh snow cap and carefully worked out camera angles that included Mt. Fuji as a backdrop in almost every shot made for spectacular viewing at the second running of the Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden , the last elite race of the year on the Japanese calendar.  Formerly held in Tsukuba, Ibaraki and serving as the season-ending National University Women's Invitational Ekiden Championships, the Mt. Fuji race was once again dominated by the unstoppable Ritsumeikan University whose seven runners handled the downhill first half, flat middle and 164 m-climb 7.7 km anchor stage with equal skill, all seven making the top four out of twenty on their stages. Maya Iino (Tokyo Nogyo Univ.) took a short-lived lead on the 78 m-downhill First Stage, but Ritsumeikan's Tomoka Iwai was quick to move to the front on the 25 m-descent Second Stage.  3000 mSC collegiate national record holder Chikako Mori (Daito Bunka Univ.) provided a brief challenge, but Iwa...

by Brett Larner videos by aoshin0507 and ekiden news The 2014 Japanese National University Track and Field Championships wrapped up Sunday with a pair of new meet records and some great races.  The day started with early morning men's and women's 5000 m postponed from Saturday after a thunderstorm hit the area.  1500 m champion Enock Omwamba (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) faced off against 10000 m champ Daniel Muiva Kitonyi (Nihon Univ.) in the men's race, battling each other all the way to the end with Omwamba getting the double by less than a second in 13:40.21. The women's 5000 m was equally close, Natsuki Omori (Ritsumeikan Univ.) winning in 15:46.94 with both Sakurako Fukuuchi (Daito Bunka Univ.) and Saori Noda (Osaka Gakuin Univ.) within a second of her. Daito Bunka University had better luck in the women's 3000 mSC, where it took three of the top four places and its top runner Chikako Mori beat national university record holder Mayuko Nakamura ...