Skip to main content

Weekend Preview: Asian Games, Berlin Marathon, Nittaidai and the Start of Ekiden Season

by Brett Larner

There is a truckload of action just waiting to dump on fans of Japanese distance around the world this weekend.  Along with the Incheon Asian Games, where athletics kick off Saturday with the women's 10000 m and 3000 mSC and the men's 5000 m, Sunday's Berlin Marathon offers more international exposure to the stealthy Kayoko Fukushi (Team Wacoal) in the women's race and the solid trio of 2:08 men Kazuhiro Maeda (Team Kyudenko) and Ryo Yamamoto (Team SGH Group Sagawa) and 2014 Nobeoka Nishi Nippon Marathon winner Kazuki Tomaru (Team Toyota).

Back home of familiar shores where laundry facilities are guaranteed to be close at hand, fall gets into full swing with the first two significant ekidens of the season, Saturday's Kansai Region University Women's Ekiden and Sunday's Kanto Region University Women's Ekiden.  Both qualify top-placing teams in the two highly competitive regions for October's National University Women's Ekiden Championships, one of two peak races of the season for collegiate women.

Non-ekiden road action is capped by the Fukuoka Prefecture 10-Mile Championships which this year feature the last four winners, all from the Barcelona Olympics marathon silver medalist Koichi Morishita-coached Toyota Kyushu team.  Most noteworthy among them is Masato Imai, using the race as a final tuneup for his return to the TCS New York City Marathon in November.  The Hakodate Half Marathon also features a healthy number of corporate league runners and collegiates, along with Iwate's Ichinoseki International Half Marathon the same day.

Down the road from Fukuoka, the Nagasaki Nighter Time Trials track meet will host many of the corporate runners based in other parts of Kyushu while northwest of Tokyo Saitama has the East Japan Corporate Long Distance Time Trials , but the main domestic track meet of the weekend is the fall's first edition of the Nittai University Time Trials series in Yokohama.  The two-day meet with everyone from amateurs to Olympians features a grab-bag of distances from 800 m to 10000 m on Saturday before focusing exclusively on 5000 m on Sunday, with 40 heats of around 30 athletes each scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. sharp and wrap up by 8:35 p.m. at the latest.

Look for as much coverage of each of these races as is humanly possible throughout the weekend right here on JRN.  And don't forget to enter JRN's Asian Games marathon prediction contest for a chance to win great limited-edition prizes.

(c) 2014 Brett Larner
all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Morii Surprises With Second-Ever Japanese Sub-2:10 at Boston

With three sub-2:09 Japanese men in the race and good weather conditions by Boston standards the chances were decent that somebody was going to follow 1981 winner Toshihiko Seko 's 2:09:26 and score a sub-2:10 at the Boston Marathon . But nobody thought it was going to be by a 2:14 amateur. Paris Olympic team member Suguru Osako had taken 3rd in Boston in 2:10:28 in his debut seven years ago, and both he and 2:08 runners Kento Otsu and Ryoma Takeuchi were aiming for spots in the top 10, Otsu after having run a 1:01:43 half marathon PB in February and Takeuchi of a 2:08:40 marathon PB at Hofu last December. A high-level amateur with a 2:14:15 PB who scored a trip to Boston after winning a local race in Japan, Yuma Morii told JRN minutes before the start of the race, "I'm not thinking about time at all. I'm going to make top 10, whatever time it takes." Running Boston for the first time Morii took off with a 4:32 on the downhill opening mile, but after that  Sis
Post a Comment
Read more

Saturday at Kanaguri and Nittai

Two big meets happened Saturday, one in Kumamoto and the other in Yokohama. At Kumamoto's Kanaguri Memorial Meet , Benard Koech (Kyudenko) turned in the performance of the day with a 13:13.52 meet record to win the men's 5000 m A-heat by just 0.11 seconds over Emmanuel Kipchirchir (SGH). The top four were all under 13:20, with 10000 m national record holder Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu) bouncing back from a DNF at last month's The TEN to take the top Japanese spot at 7th overall in 13:24.57. The B-heat was also decently quick, Shadrack Rono (Subaru) winning in 13:21.55 and Shoya Yonei (JR Higashi Nihon) running a 10-second PB to get under 13:30 for the first time in 13:29.29 for 6th. Paris Olympics marathoner Akira Akasaki (Kyudenko) was 9th in 13:30.62. South Sudan's Abraham Guem (Ami AC) also set a meet record in the men's 1500 m A-heat in 3:38.94. 3000 mSC national record holder Ryuji Miura made his debut with the Subaru corporate team, running 3:39.78 for 2n
1 comment
Read more

93-Year-Old Masters Track and Field WR Holder Hiroo Tanaka: "Everyone has Unexplored Intrinsic Abilities"

  In the midst of a lot of talk about how to keep the aging population young, there are people with long lives who are showing extraordinary physical abilities. One of them is Hiroo Tanaka , 93, a multiple world champion in masters track and field. Tanaka began running when he was 60, before which he'd never competed in his adult life. "He's so fast he's world-class." "His running form is so beautiful. It's like he's flying." Tanaka trains at an indoor track in Aomori five days a week. Asked about him, that's the kind of thing the people there say. Tanaka holds multiple masters track and field world records, where age is divided into five-year groups. Last year at the World Masters Track and Field Championships in Poland he set a new world record of 38.79 for 200 m in the M90 class (men's 90-94 age group). People around the world were amazed at the time, which was almost unbelievable for a 92-year-old. After retiring from his job as an el
Post a Comment
Read more