Skip to main content

Kajiwara Gets 2016 Off to Fast Start, Kawauchi and Yoshitomi Break Ibusuki Nanohana CR - Weekend Road Race Highlights

by Brett Larner
additional results coming shortly

The 2016 road race reason got started early in Japan with at least four quality half marathons and one of the world's biggest marathons all happening Sunday.  Aritaka Kajiwara, a former teammate of Yuki Kawauchi's on the Hakone Ekiden's Kanto Region Select Team who quit the Press Kogyo corporate team mid-fall to go independent, ran a 1:02:45 course record to win Tochigi's Takanezawa Half Marathon by a second over Kinari Ikeda, an alternate for last week's Hakone Ekiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University who broke 1:03 for the first time.  Aoyama Gakuin first-year Homare Morita made a quality half marathon debut in 1:03:01 for 3rd, Ikeda and Morita reassuring Aoyama Gakuin that it has the depth to maintain a solid lineup after four of this year's winning members graduate in March.

Further south in Oita, former course record holder Fumihiro Maruyama (Asahi Kasei) ran solo to repeat his 2010 Oita City Half Marathon win, 2 1/2 minutes ahead of the runner-up and just off his old time in 1:03:42.  Chieko Kido (Canon AC Kyushu) won the women's race in 1:15:22, her teammate Minori Goto taking the women's 10 km in a course record 34:11.  Local high schooler Sota Ito (Oita Tomei H.S.) broke 30 in the men's 10 km, running 29:58 for the win.  Another road 10 km at the South Japan Long Distance Meet in nearby Kagoshima saw the top two dip under 30 as Kenyan first-year Geoffrey Gichia (Daiichi Kogyo Univ.) outran independent Yusuke Tobimatsu for the win 29:50 to 29:55.

After a mostly disappointing 2015, Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref Gov't) got his 2016 started the right way as he returned to the Ibusuki Nanohana Marathon, also in Kagoshima.  Running with a sprained ankle last year Kawauchi won in 2:24:10, the slowest marathon time of his career.  Fit this year he hoped to run 2:15 to 2:16, and with no competition at all he did just that.  Running an even pace throughout the race, he crossed the finish line in a new course record of 2:15:14, the first man in Ibusuki Nanohana's 35-year history to break 2:20 and just the third to win it two years in a row.  2nd place was almost 17 minutes back.  Alongside Kawauchi, Japan's #1 amateur woman Hiroko Yoshitomi (First Dream AC) scored her third marathon win in the last two months with a 2:45:22 course record in the women's race.  Her margin of victory was even more overwhelming than Kawauchi's, beating the runner-up by 21 minutes.  Yoshitomi plans to run both the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon and Tokyo Marathon in February, going for the 2:31:28 PB she set in Tokyo three years ago.

© 2016 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

The Ivy League at the Izumo Ekiden in Review

Last week I was contacted by Will Geiken , who I'd met years ago when he was a part of the Ivy League Select Team at the Izumo Ekiden . He was looking for historical results from Izumo and lists of past team members, and I was able to put together a pretty much complete history, only missing the alternates from 1998 to 2010 and a little shaky on the reverse transliterations of some of the names from katakana back into the Western alphabet for the same years. Feel free to send corrections or additions to alternate lists. It's interesting to go back and see some names that went on to be familiar, to see the people who made an impact like Princeton's Paul Morrison , Cornell's Max King , Stanford's Brendan Gregg in one of the years the team opened up beyond the Ivy League, Cornell's Ben de Haan , Princeton's Matt McDonald , and Harvard's Hugo Milner last year, and some of the people who struggled with the format. 1998 Team: 15th of 21 overall, 2:14:10 (43
Post a Comment
Read more

Hirabayashi Runs PB at Shanghai Half, WR Holder Nakata Dominates Fuji Five Lakes - Weekend Road Roundup

Returning to the roads after his 2:06:18 win at February's Osaka Marathon, Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Koku Gakuin University) took 5th at Sunday's Shanghai Half Marathon in a PB 1:01:23, just under a minute behind winner Roncer Kipkorir Konga (Kenya) who clocked a CR 1:00:29. After inexplicably running the equivalent of a sub-59 half marathon to win the Hakone Ekiden's Third Stage, Aoi Ota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) was back to running performances consistent with his other PBs with a 1:02:30 for 8th. His AGU teammate Kyosuke Hiramatsu was 10th in 1:04:00. Women's winner Magdalena Shauri (Tanzania) also set a new CR in 1:09:57. Aoyama Gakuin runners took the top four spots in the men's half marathon at the Aomori Sakura Marathon , with Hakone alternate Kosei Shiraishi getting the win in 1:04:32 and B-team members Shunto Hamakawa and Kei Kitamura 2nd and 3rd in 1:04:45 and 1:04:48. Club runners took the other division titles, Hina Shinozaki winning the women's half
Post a Comment
Read more