japan running news

The Nagoya Women's Marathon , the world's largest women-only marathon and the last race in the selection cycle for September's Tokyo World Championships, happens Sunday. Weather conditions are looking better than what they had in Tokyo and Osaka the last two weekends, 7˚ at the start and rising to 12˚ with sunny skies. The wind looks a bit stronger than ideal, but it could be worse. Fuji TV has the live broadcast starting at 9:00 a.m. Sunday local time, and if you've got a VPN you should be able to watch the TVer streaming . One option for  a leaderboard is here , and another here . We'll have some coverage on @JRNLive . Just like last time around there are three Ethiopian and Kenyan-born athletes at the top list, this time it being sub-2:20 women Sheila Chepkirui , winner in NYC last year, and Ruti Aga , winner in Xiamen in January, and last year's Nagoya runner-up Eunice Chebichii Chumba . But last year Yuka Ando still pulled off the win, so there's a c...

In its 77th edition the Marugame Half Marathon had what had to have been the best conditions in its history, and the deep fields made the most of it in both the men's and women's races. 15 hours of heavy rain that let up 2 hours before the start combined with single-digit temperatures and almost no wind to make a cool mist that hung over the area throughout the race. The men's race was hot from the start, 2 pacers taking it through 5 km in 14:05 and 10 km in 28:02, 59:09 pace vs the Japanese NR of 1:00:00. That kind of heat burned off all but 6 people, CR holder Alexander Mutiso , Emmanuel Maru , James Mutuku , Tomoki Ota , Kotaro Shinohara and Kento Baba , but Bedan Karoki and others including a trio of university men were only another few second behind. Baba, a Rikkyo University runner with a PB of only 1:02:35, was the first to drop off, followed by Mutuku from Yamanashi Gakuin University . Ota and Shinohara, training partners under Komazawa University great Hiroaki...

Japan's two big races this weekend both have a lot of excitement around them, but cold rain threatens to hold back the quality of performances people are hoping for. At the Kagawa Marugame International Half Marathon there are 19 men with times in the 58-60 minute range within the last 3 years, and among them sometime training partners Tomoki Ota and Kotaro Shinohara , 1:00:08 and 1:00:11 in Marugame 2 years ago, will be taking a serious shot at the 1:00:00 Japanese national record. Shinohara told JRN that he is targeting 59:45, and that Ota is his only real competition to get the NR. The rain forecast looks light with headwinds in the first half and tailwinds on the return trip, so between that and a front group including Alexander Mutiso , Cleophas Kandie , Bedan Karoki and Emmanuel Maru it's possible one of them, or someone else, will turn in Japan's first sub-60. The women's race features Dolphine Omare , Pauline Kamulu and Dominique Scott in the 66-67 minute ...

It's a big year at the Marugame Half on Feb. 2. On the women's side you've got two of the fastest Japan-based Kenyans and past Marugame winners Dolphine Omare and Pauline Kamulu vs.  Dominique Scott , Calli Hauger-Thackery and Isobel Batt-Doyle and home team Rika Kaseda , Kaede Kawamura and Haruka Kokai . On the men's side you've got sub-60 Kenyans Alexander Mutiso , Cleophas Kandie , Bedan Karoki and Emmanuel Maru with another 15 men sub-61 right behind them. The Japanese crew is led by frequent training partners Tomoki Ota , 1:00:08, and Kotaro Shinohara , 1:00:11. Although they do it in the big ekidens all the time, no Japanese man has ever broken the one hour barrier in an official half marathon. C'mon already, this is the chance. Get it done. There's a smattering of other internationals mixed in including Canada's Rory Linkletter and Australians Brett Robinson , Andy Buchanan and Tim Vincent , but the other main story on the men's side...

Last year Margaret Akidor ran a 2-minute PB of 1:09:29 to win the Sanyo Ladies Road Race half marathon. She's back Sunday to try to make it 3 in a row, but she's got serious competition from Pauline Kamulu , 1:07:22 in Marugame last year, and last year's 10 km CR breaker Agnes Mwikali , making her debut here. 31:17.40 runner Tabitha Njeri is also debuting. The domestic field is relatively weak, with no current sub-1:10 Japanese women and Rinka Hida topping the list at 1:10:10. 2nd and 3rd in the 10 km last year, Janet Nyiva and Kaede Kawamura are sticking to the shorter race again this year, and in place of Mwikali they've got Naomi Muthoni , 31:15 in Sanyo 3 years ago, to deal with. Sub-15 runner Susan Kamotho is also debuting. Sanyo Ladies Road Race Okayama, 15 Dec. 2024 complete entry list times listed are athletes' best in last 3 years except where noted Half Marathon Pauline Kamulu (Route Inn Hotels) - 1:07:22 (Marugame Half 2023) Margaret Akidor (Comodi...

2018 World Half Marathon Championships bronze medalist Pauline Kamulu Kaveke and Tokyo Olympics marathon trials winner Shogo Nakamura survived tough conditions, 22˚C at the start with 82% humidity, sunny skies and almost no wind, to take the 2024 Hokkaido Marathon Sunday in Sapporo. Both running their debuts, Kamulu and Shiho Tachizako ran steadily around 2:28-flat pace surrounded by a group of amateur men, staying together until just before 30 km when Tachizako started to fade. Kamulu struggled with the hot conditions late in the race and could only watch the clock as sub-2:30 slipped away, looking very tired as she crossed the finish line in 2:31:04. Tachizako faded to 2:33:47 for 2nd, but even that was good enough to easily beat the rest of the field, with last year's 2nd-placer Ayano Ikeuchi 3rd in 2:35:26 in her third marathon so far this year. Nakamura had said pre-race that he didn't care about time and was only focused on getting in the win, and that was exactly ho...

2022 Oregon World Championships gold medalist and 2023 Budapest World Championships silver medalist Gotytom Gebreslase leads the elite field for the Mar. 10 Nagoya Women's Marathon , the last chance for Japanese women to steal a place on the Paris Olympics team. The last two years Nagoya has had a $250,000 payout for the winner, the biggest in the sport, but with the exchange rate and Japan's economic situation being what it is that's down to $150,000 this year. That's still enough to pull in a big talent like Gebreslase, the only woman in the field positioned to verrrry hypothetically drag one of the Japanese women to the 2:18:58 they'd need to pick up the 3rd Paris team spot. Ai Hosoda was 3rd at October's Olympic trials but was bumped down to 1st alternate by Honami Maeda 's 2:18:59 NR last month in Osaka . Hosoda, Ayuko Suzuki , Rika Kaseda and Yuka Ando have run under or within seconds of the 2:21:41 they needed before Maeda's run, but 2:18 puts...

Sheila Chepkirui is the favorite in the Feb. 4 Marugame Half Marathon women's race, at 1:04:36 about three minutes up on her closest competition, Japan-based Kenyans Pauline Kamulu (Route Inn Hotels) and Dolphine Omare Nyaboke (U.S.E.). Ayuko Suzuki (Japan Post) leads the Japanese women at 1:08:53, but the most interesting person on the entry list is her teammate Ririka Hironaka , all-time Japanese #2 for 5000 m and 10000 m and making her half marathon debut here. When Hitomi Niiya set the current NR of 1:06:38 in early 2020 it seemed like a mark that would last a long time, but with a better understanding of how much shoe tech has inflated road times since then that has to be a realistic goal for Hironaka, if not this time then next. Sub-58 man Alexander Mutiso (ND Software) has a recent best of 58:48 that puts him just ahead of Charles Langat , ranked #2 at 58:53. Cleophas Kandie (Mitsubishi Juko) is the only other runner under 60 minutes with a best of 59:18 from Marugame...

  No surprises on the first day of the 2023 National Corporate Track and Field Championships at Gifu's Nagaragawa Stadium as Japan-based Kenyan women swept all three track finals. Janet Nyiva (Panasonic) won the expected one-on-one against Esther Wangui (Starts) in the junior women's 3000 m, coming up short of Rosemary Wanjiru 's meet record but still dipping under 9 minutes with an 8:58.03 for the win versus Wangui's 9:01.91. Kadogo Chebotibin (SID Group) was 3rd in 9:11.03 with Mitsu Ozaki (Sysmex) the top Japanese at 4th in 9:19.59. In the women's 1500 m, Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) and Esther Muthoni (Nitori) both went way under the meet record, Akidor scoring the win in 4:05.29 over 5 seconds under the old record and Muthoni 2nd in 4:06.42, 4 seconds under the record. Two athletes who left the 2022 National Corporate Women's Ekiden champion Shiseido team finished 3rd and 4th just off the record, Tomoka Kimura (Sekisui Kagaku) 3rd in 4:11.51 and W...

The National Corporate Track and Field Championships happen in Gifu over the next three days, a late-season meetup for non-distance runners in Japan’s corporate leagues and a chance for distance runners to see where they’re at after summer base training just before ekiden season kicks off. The entry lists always promise a lot that the start lists can’t deliver, and especially with the Asian Games starting next week it’s inevitable that a lot of the big names won’t really be there.  Complete meet schedule here . As of this writing only the distance event start lists have been released. The junior women’s 3000 m at 17:00 Friday is pretty much a head-to-head between Janet Nyiva (Panasonic), 8:49.32, and Esther Wangui (Starts), 8:53.21, the main question being whether they can hit Tokyo Marathon winner Rosemary Wanjiru ’s 8:48.44 meet record from 2014. The women’s 10000 m starts at 18:45 Friday and features Pauline Kamulu (Route Inn Hotels) as its top seed at 30:20.97. All sub-31...

In its 75th anniversary race the Marugame Half saw new course records in both the women's and men's races and a near-miss on a new Japanese men's NR. Japan-based Kenyan  Pauline Kamulu soloed a 1:07:22 CR to win the women's race by 49 seconds, 4 seconds under the old CR and her fastest time since her 1:06:56 for bronze at the 2018 World Half Marathon Championships. Rika Kaseda continued to climb the ranks among Japanese women with a 1:08:11 for 2nd, landing her in the all-time Japanese top 10. Australian duo Isobel Batt-Doyle and Sinead Diver were 3-4 just 2 seconds apart in 1:09:27 and 1:09:29. In the men's race a lead sextet of Japan-based Kenyans Alexander Mutiso , Cleophas Kandie and Andrew Lorot , corporate leaguer Tomoki Ota , and collegiate runners Kotaro Shinohara and Reishi Yoshida went through 10 km together in 10 km before splitting into two groups. Lorot fell off the front group before 15 km and Yoshida off the back group by 15 km, leaving Muti...

Post-ekiden road season is up to full speed in Japan with two major races this Sunday. First up, the Kagawa Marugame International Half Marathon kicks off its 75th anniversary edition at 10:35 a.m. with an Aussie-heavy field and the usual domestic depth. Kenyan Nancy Jelagat is the class of the women's field on paper with a 1:05:21 in Berlin 2021, but without any race results in 2022 it's a question how she'll fare against Japan-based Pauline Kamulu (Route Inn Hotels), the Aussie trio of Sinead Diver , Eloise Wellings and Isobel Batt-Doyle , Brit Charlotte Purdue , American Sarah Pagano , and top-ranked domestic woman Rika Kaseda (Daihatsu). Sub-58 man Alexander Mutiso (ND Software) fronts the men's field, with Aussies Jack Rayner and Riley Cocks set to mix it up with debuting 27:20.34 man Cleophas Kandie (Mitsubishi Juko) and a million domestic men including sub-61 half marathoners Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) Takashi Namba (Toenec) and Yusuke Nishiyama ...

Like the National University Track and Field Championships two weeks ago, this long weekend's National Corporate Track and Field Championships come at a funny point in the season, after two months of road season base training in Hokkaido and right at the start of ekiden and overseas marathon season. Half the country is in Berlin this weekend and another chunk is at the new Okukuma Ekiden , a raced backed by Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University head coach Susumu Hara that brings together top high school, university and corporate league men's teams. But a lot of corporate leaguers will be lining up in Gifu for Corporate Nationals. Day 1 is being streamed live above starting at 15:25 Friday local time. The main events start at 15:30 with the first-round heats of the men's 100 m, featuring past 4x100 m national relay team members Shuhei Tada (Sumitomo Denko), Ryuichiro Sakai (Osaka Gas) and Shota Iizuka (Mizuno). The junior women's 3000 m at 16:30 has a pret...

Track season in Japan goes almost year-round, with the fall time trial meets acting mostly as tune-ups for ekiden season. Both of the big meets this weekend played that role. At the Chugoku Corporate Time Trials meet Saturday in Hiroshima, the top five men, all Kenyan, broke the old 5000 m meet record of 13:36.36 thanks in part to the presence of a large number of teams from the Kyushu region. Emmanuel Kiplagat (Mitsubishi Juko) got the win in 13:19.05. Africans took the top seven spots, Shunya Kikuchi (Chugoku Denryoku) the first Japanese man at 8th in 13:53.33. Kenyans went 1-3 in the women's 3000 m, Teresiah Muthoni (Daiso) taking 1st in 9:03.11 over teammate Rebecca Mwangi , 2nd in 9:03.47, and Rose Wangui (Sera H.S.), 3rd in 9:04.40. Honoka Tanaike (Otsuka Seiyaku) was the top Japanese woman at 4th in 9:30.52. The 298th Nittai University Time Trials meet in Yokohama was smaller than usual, with only twelve heats of men's 5000 m on Sunday. Saturday saw newcomer Nelso...

The Route Inn Hotels women's ekiden team has announced that 1996 Atlanta Olympian Masako Chiba has joined its coaching staff as of Apr. 1. Chiba graduated from Kyoto's Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. before joining the Asahi Kasei corporate team. At the Atlanta Olympics she was 5th in the 10000 m, following up a year later at the Athens World Championships with a bronze medal in the 10000 m. After changing focus to the marathon, she won the bronze medal at the 2003 Paris World Championships to become the first woman in history to medal on both the track and road. Since her retirement Chiba has been active as a race commentator and guest runner at races, as well as helping guide amateur running clubs. "I was an athlete for 15 years and a race commentator for 15 years, and now I've found a new dream to pursue! The opportunity to take on coaching is the culmination of a life in athletics, and it feels like an exciting adventure to be heading into my third career like this,...

The 2021 Hokuren Distance Challenge series wrapped up Saturday in Chitose with a big day for Japanese middle distance. Hiroki Minamoto  (Kantai Heiyo Univ.) started things off with a 1:45.75 to win the men's 800 m, exactly tying the national and collegiate records. The holder of both records, Sho Kawamoto (Suzuki), was 2nd in 1:45.83, with Mikuto Kaneko  (Chuo Univ.) right there in 1:45.85 to come in at 3rd in the race and the all-time JPN lists. Kazuki Kawamura  (Toenec) kept it going in the men's 1500 m, taking over 1.5 sec off Nanami Arai 's 7-week-old NR in 3:35.42. U18 NR holder Keita Sato (Rakunan H.S.) was 2nd in 3:37.18, breaking the U20, U18 and H.S. national records and moving up to all-time JPN #3.  Tokyo Olympics 5000 m team member Yuta Bando  (Fujitsu) was 3rd in 3:37.99, good for all-time JPN #6, with his teammate in both Fujitsu and the Olympic 5000 m Hiroki Matsueda  last in 3:52.01. Although they're listed as DNS in the official results,...

Four out of five corporate regional championship meets went off as schedule this weekend, with the 5 1st Hokuriku Region meet in Ishikawa the only one to cancel amid the latest COVID-19 wave hitting Japan.  The 63rd East Japan Region meet in Saitama was the biggest and fastest of those that did happen. The biggest news was in the T11-T13 men's 5000 m, where T11-class  Kenya Karasawa  (GSWC) won in 15:09.94, going a second and a half under the previous world record for his class.  Sitonki Kiprono  (Komori Corp.) turned in the only sub-28 men's 10000 m of the weekend, winning Saturday's A-heat in 27:47.69. Justus Soget  (Honda) was likewise the only one to go sub-3:40 for 1500 m, winning Saturday's A-heat in 3:39:12. Soget doubled to win Sunday's men's 5000 m A-heat in 13:29.43 going close to 55 seconds for the final lap and ending up the only man under 13:30 for the weekend. Pauline Kamulu  (Route Inn Hotels) won the East Japan women's 10000 m in 32:...

In the first major road race held on public roads in Japan since the coronavirus crisis began, the Sekisui Kagaku team won its second-straight Princess Ekiden Sunday in Munakata, Fukuoka to lead the qualifiers for November's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships. 25 km national record holder Sayaka Sato took things out with a 22:22 CR for the 7.0 km First Stage, setting up a lead that last year's double 800 m and 1500 m national champ Ran Urabe held onto despite only running the third-fastest time on her 3.6 km leg. Urabe handed off to half marathon NR holder Hitomi Niiya , who took an incredible 1:15 off the record for the 10.7 km Third Stage. Niiya's time of 32:43 equated to 30:35 for 10 km, well under the track 10000 m NR, and singlehandedly took Sekisui Kagaku from a 10 second lead to 1:58 out front. Sekisui Kagaku's last three runners had it relatively easy, none of them in the top 8 on their stages but anchor Chikako Mori bringing them home saf...

National championship ekiden season looks like it's going to mostly happen, and this will be the first full weekend of qualifying action for the winter's main events. Following Saturday's Hakone Ekiden qualifier is Sunday's Princess Ekiden , the qualifying race for the Nov. 22 National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships. This is the first major ekiden to be held on public streets during the coronavirus era, so there is a lot of attention, good and bad, to how it goes and the organizers have banned cheering groups from the different teams in the race and asked fans not to come cheer along the course. It's a test drive to see how the rest of championship season will go to be sure. Last year's top 8 teams at Nationals are guaranteed the return trip this year, The top 14 teams at the Princess Ekiden will qualify to join them, and with 28 teams entered following scratches from Aichi Denki and Daiso that means a decently competitive race to make it. Last yea...