Skip to main content

Team Nissin on the Track

by Brett Larner

Christmas came early this year.

For this morning`s Harriers practice we went over to Oda Field to do 4 x 5000 m with 5 min. recovery rather than training in Yoyogi Park as usual. Oda is the main public track in central Tokyo and there are usually some interesting people there working out. Today Keio University and Gakushuin University were both there along with a few high schools, clubs and individuals. One serious-looking woman I didn`t recognize was doing easy laps in a national team warmup uniform. About halfway through our workout one of the best professional teams in Japan, Nissin Shokuhin, showed up for some hard training.

Team Nissin includes some stellar talent on its roster. Toshinari Suwa is a 2:07 marathoner, was 6th in the Athens Olympics marathon and 7th in the Osaka World Championships marathon, and is a favorite to make the Beijing Olympics marathon team . Kazuyoshi Tokumoto was a legendary university runner and is considered one of the future stars of Japanese marathoning. Julius Gitahi ran the 5000 m for Kenya at the Sydney Olympics. Ngatuny Gideon was 4th at this year`s World Cross Country Championships. All of these runners plus the rest of Nissin`s squad and at least 4 coaches, several with video cameras, came to Oda Field. It seemed like a pretty serious day since the annual pro championship All-Japan Jitsugyodan Men`s Ekiden is just over 2 weeks away.

The team probably warmed up by running from Nissin`s headquarters in nearby Shinjuku, 15-20 min at a comfortable pace. After some easy individual strides, the 10 Japanese Nissin runners ran 3 x 2000 m with 400 m continuous recovery. Team captain Tokumoto led the first repeat in 70 seconds per lap, 2:55 / km pace, with the other members running single file behind. Suwa ran near the end of the line. The following two repeats were slightly faster, about 69 and 68 seconds per lap, making for about 2:50 / km pace on the final rep. After this the pack broke up and people did individual work.

While the Japanese team members were running together, Gideon ran his own workout. First he did 5 x 1000 m with 200 m continuous recovery. I heard a coach call off 2:43 for the first repeat; subsequent reps got faster, as low as 2:35. After a short recovery following the last rep, Gideon moved to 700 m repeats with 100 m recovery. I couldn`t clock or count these since I was still running but the pace seemed quite a bit faster. While he was doing his workout other people on the track were gradually forgetting their own as they stopped or slowed down to watch. A junior high school coach stopped filming her team to film Gideon. I heard many people admiring the pure beauty of his form.

After this part of the workout the Nissin team gathered together and seemed to be finished. Just before I left, though, Julius Gitahi appeared and started warming up, so it`s likely the team were in a rest period and were going to continue the workout. Nissin will run the All-Japan Jitsugyodan Men`s Ekiden on Jan. 1. Suwa will run the Biwako Mainichi Marathon in March to try to qualify for the Beijing Olympics.

(c) 2007 Brett Larner

all rights reserved

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Japan's Olympic Marathon Team Meets the Press

With renewed confidence, Japan's Olympic marathon team will face the total 438 m elevation difference hills of Paris this summer. The members of the women's and men's marathon teams for August's Paris Olympics appeared at a press conference in Tokyo on Mar. 25 in conjunction with the Japan Marathon Championship Series III (JMC) awards gala. Women's Olympic trials winner Yuka Suzuki (Daiichi Seimei) said she was riding a wave of motivation in the wake of the new women's national record. When she watched Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) set the record at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon on TV, Suzuki said she was, "absolutely stunned." Her coach Sachiko Yamashita told her afterward, "When someone breaks the NR, things change," and Suzuki found herself saying, "I want to take my shot." After training for a great run in Paris, she said, "I definitely want to break the NR in one of my marathons after that." Mao

Weekend Racing Roundup

  China saw a new men's national record of 2:06:57 from  Jie He  at the Wuxi Marathon Sunday, but in Japan it was a relatively quiet weekend with mostly cold and rainy amateur-level marathons across the country. At the Tokushima Marathon , club runner Yuhi Yamashita  won the men's race by almost 4 1/2 minutes in 2:17:02, the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, but oddly took 22 seconds to get across the starting line. The women's race saw a close finish between the top two, with Shiho Iwane  winning in 2:49:33 over Ayaka Furukawa , 2nd in 2:49:46.  At the 41st edition of the Sakura Marathon in Chiba, Yukie Matsumura  (Comodi Iida) ran the fastest Japanese women's time of the weekend, 2:42:45, to take the win. Club runner Yuki Kuroda  won the men's race in 2:20:08.  Chika Yokota  won the Saga Sakura Marathon women's race in 2:49:33.  Yuki Yamada  won the men's race in 2:21:47 after taking the lead in the final 2 km.  Naoki Inoue  won the 16th r

Takeuchi Wins Niigata Half in Boston Tune-Up

Running in cold, windy and rainy conditions, Ryoma Takeuchi (ND Software) warmed up for April's Boston Marathon with a win at Wednesday's Niigata Half Marathon . Takeuchi sat behind Nittai University duo Susumu Yamazaki and Ryuga Ishikawa in the early stages, then made a series of pushes to pick up the pace. Each time he tucked in behind whoever went to the front, while behind them others dropped off. Before 15 km only Yamazaki and Riki Koike of Soka University were left, and when Takeuchi went to the front the last time after 15 km only Koike followed. By 16 he was gone too, leaving Takeuchi to solo it in to the win in 1:03:13 with a 17-second negative split. "This was my last fitness check before the Boston Marathon next month, and my time was right on-target," he said post-race. "Everything went as planned. I'm looking forward to racing some of the world's best in Boston, and my goal there is to place in the single digits." Just back from tr