18-Year-Old Shimoda Sets Takanezawa Half Marathon Course Record

by Brett Larner

An alternate for Aoyama Gakuin University's course record-setting team at last week's Hakone Ekiden, 18-year-old Yuta Shimoda led the field with a 1:03:16 course record at the 42nd running of the Takanezawa Genki Up Half Marathon on Jan. 11 in Takanezawa, Tochigi. Shimoda's time was a PB by over 3 minutes and was enough to beat fellow AGU first-year alternate Yuki Nakamura by more than 45 seconds. AGU runners took the top four spots, with Hakone 6th-placer Tokai University alternate Ryunosuke Hayashi 5th in 1:04:28, also under the old course record. Nami Iwahara (Gazelle AC) won the women's division in 1:23:22.

Course records also fell at the Oita City Half Marathon in Kyushu. 2014 Kita-Kyushu Marathon winner Yuka Yano led a Canon AC Kyushu sweep of the top four spots in the women's race with a course record 1:13:41. Ethiopian Melaku Aberu, a runner for the locally-based Kurosaki Harima team, outran Oita native and sub-2:10 marathoner Tomoya Adachi (Team Asahi Kasei) for the win in the men's race in another course record of 1:02:47.

Solid women's results also turned up at the 16th Tanigawa Mari Half Marathon in Tokyo, where Eri Okubo (Miki House) beat her former teammate Yumiko Kinoshita (Second Wind AC) by nearly 30 seconds in 1:15:31. Minor league corporate runners Sho Matsumoto (Nikkei Business) and Yusuke Kodama (Comodi Iida) went head-to-head in the men's race, Matsumoto getting the win by 8 seconds in 1:06:25.

42nd Takanezawa Genki Up Half Marathon
Takanezawa, Tochigi, 1/11/15

Men
1. Yuta Shimoda (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:03:16 - CR, PB
2. Yuki Nakamura (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:02 - PB
3. Koki Ito (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:20 - PB
4. Kinari Ikeda (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:25 - PB
5. Ryunosuke Hayashi (Tokai Univ.) - 1:04:28
6. Kokoro Watanabe (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:04:58
7. Nanami Arai (Tokai Univ.) - 1:05:02
8. Nozomi Okoshi (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:05:31
9. Kento Tamura (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 1:05:53
10. Shu Ogasawara (Tokai Univ.) - 1:05:58

Women
1. Nami Iwahara (Gazelle AC) - 1:23:22

16th Tanigawa Mari Half Marathon
Arakawa, Tokyo, 1/11/15

Men
1. Sho Matsumoto (Nikkei Business) - 1:06:25
2. Yusuke Kodama (Team Komodi Iida) - 1:06:33

Women
1. Eri Okubo (Miki House) - 1:15:31
2. Yumiko Kinoshita (Second Wind AC) - 1:15:55

Oita City Half Marathon
Oita, 1/12/15

Men
1. Melaku Abera (Ethiopia/Team Kurosaki Harima) - 1:02:47 - CR
2. Tomoya Adachi (Team Asahi Kasei) - 1:04:19
3. Tatsuya Oshinomi (Team Nishitetsu) - 1:04:46
4. Junichi Tsubouchi (Team Kurosaki Harima) - 1:04:56
5. Kaoru Nakahara (Team Kurosaki Harima) - 1:05:06

Women
1. Yuka Yano (Canon AC Kyushu) - 1:13:41 - CR
2. Chieko Kido (Canon AC Kyushu) - 1:14:19
3. Megumi Amako (Canon AC Kyushu) - 1:16:09
4. Chiyuki Mochizuki (Canon AC Kyushu) - 1:7:56

(c) 2015 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

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

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

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

japan running news

Search This Blog