Track Training Kawauchi-Style

by Brett Larner

With four months to go until the 2011 World Championships men's marathon in Daegu, Korea, the last few days saw the three 2:09 men on Japan's team racing 10000 m on the track, Yoshinori Oda (Team Toyota) running 28:24.59 at the May 1 Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational and Hiroyuki Horibata (Team Asahi Kasei) and Kentaro Nakamoto (Team Yasukawa Denki) setting PBs of 28:30.32 and 29:04.24 at the May 3 Nobeoka Spring Time Trials.

Top-ranked Japanese man Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref.), who ran 2:08:37 for 3rd at February's Tokyo Marathon, was also on the track on May 3, running at the Heisei Kokusai University Time Trials meet near his home in Saitama, northwest of Tokyo. Kawauchi ran the meet with sometime training partner Saeki Makino (Kawaguchi T&F Assoc.), doing three 5000 m heats as a progression workout with 25 minutes recovery between each repetition.

Heat 4 - 4:10 p.m.

Makino - 14:58.29, 1st

Kawauchi - 14:58.54, 2nd

Heat 6 - 4:50 p.m.

Kawauchi - 14:48.95, 2nd

Makino - 14:54.07, 3rd

Heat 8 - 5:30 p.m.

Kawauchi - 14:21.66, 3rd

Makino - 14:48.24, 11th

Kawauchi's next serious race will be the first running of the Naoko Takahashi Gifu Half Marathon on May 15 together with the fifth man on the World Championships marathon team, 2010 Asian Games marathon silver medalist Yukihiro Kitaoka (Team NTN). Following that he plans to run the 50 km division of Japan's premier ultramarathon, the Lake Saroma ultra in late June.

Kawauchi was not the only noteworthy runner at the Heisei Kokusai meet. Women's 10000 m junior national record holder Megumi Kinukawa (Team Mizuno), who dropped out of last week's Hyogo Relay Carnival 10000 m during her most recent comeback from an unending streak of injuries and illnesses, ran Heat 1 of the men's 10000 m together with male teammate Shunsuke Abe who ran as pacemaker. Kinukawa clocked 33:01.21, far off the pace she attempted in Hyogo but still credible as a step on her comeback trail. Stephen Mayaka-coached newcomer Joseph Onsarigo (Kenya/Sozo Gakuen Univ.) won the 1500 m A-heat, running 3:48.70.

Also on May 3rd, high schooler Tomoka Kimura (Chikushi Joshi H.S.) set a meet record in the women's 5000 m at the Fukuoka Prefecture T&F Championships. Her time of 15:55.26 was the 7th-best by a Japanese woman so far this season and the only competitive performance at the otherwise low-key meet.

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