Skip to main content

Kawauchi Over Nakamoto in 2:08:15 Beppu-Oita Course Record (updated with video)

by Brett Larner

In its 62nd running the Feb. 3 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon was billed as one thing and one thing only, a showdown between Japan's most reliable marathoner, London Olympics 6th-place Kentaro Nakamoto (Team Yasukawa Denki), and its most idiosyncratic, the independent Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref.). What a gift to Beppu-Oita, an historic race consigned to second-tier status.  It was as if Americans Meb Keflezighi and Dathan Ritzenhein lined up to go head-to-head at Grandma's Marathon.   With exceptional performances given consideration in picking the Moscow World Championships team their pre-race goals were clear.  Nakamoto: "My goal is to win a marathon for the first time. I'm aiming to break my PB [2:08:53]." Kawauchi: "If I run faster than Hiroyuki Horibata did [2:08:24 in Fukuoka last December] then I might not do Lake Biwa in March."  And did they deliver on those words.

The rest of the field and race are barely worth mentioning.  Pacer Takuya Fukatsu (Team Asahi Kasei) took the field through 25 km in 1:16:00 absent any support from two spectacularly amateurish Kenyan pacers.  The pack dwindled, Nakamoto's teammate Shinji Tateishi (Team Yasukawa Denki) suffered a nasty rolling fall at a water station, Kawauchi's rival Ser-Od Bat-Ochir (Mongolia) lost touch at 25 km, and Kawauchi went to work at 28 km after a feint by Nakamoto.

Launching the first of six death-defying surges over the last third of the race, he was immediately out front.  And right on him was Nakamoto.  Nakamoto went to the front, the pair started splitting sub-3-minute kilometers, and in a blink there was nobody else in sight.  At 30.5 km Kawauchi surged, and again Nakamoto retook the lead.  Again at 33.4 km. Again at 36.4 km.  Again at 36. 9 km.  Desperation on the face of Kawauchi, calm collection playing on Nakamoto.  Both on track to take the 2:08:30 course record.

Nakamoto has PB'd every year since debuting in 2008, has never finished outside the top ten, and has never come close to anything that could be called a bad marathon.  All business when it comes to clearly articulating his goals and then meeting them.  His one flaw is his finish, a weakness that made him lose out to Ryo Yamamoto (Team Sagawa Express) at Lake Biwa last year and almost miss the Olympic team and to Keflezighi at the Olympics but one he tried to work on this time with fewer long runs and more hard tempo work.  The consistent point through Kawauchi's countless marathons has been his finish, almost always recording the fastest split in the field from 40 km to the finish.

Taken together this meant Nakamoto had to get away by no later than 37 km to have a chance of opening enough of a gap to stay ahead of Kawauchi's finish, but when that mark came he was still recovering from Kawauchi's fifth surge.  Again he took the lead in the best race of his life, looking strong and in control with Kawauchi on the verge of snapping, but like at the Olympics you knew he was doomed as the kilometers went by and he couldn't get away.  In a replay of the 2011 Fukuoka Marathon Kawauchi made his sixth and final attack coming into and again out of a water station at 40.5 km, and that was it.  A gap appeared that Nakamoto could not cover.



Kawauchi split a superb 6:32 for the final 2.195 km to Nakamoto's 6:52, breaking the course record by 15 seconds with a new record of 2:08:15 in his fifth race, fourth win, third course record, second marathon and first PB of 2013.  Cracking Toshihiko Seko's best and tying that of two-time Olympic 4th-placer Takeyuki Nakayama with a 1-second negative split. And he stayed on his feet.  Nakamoto missed joining him under the record by just 6 seconds but took nearly 20 seconds off his own best with a time of 2:08:35. Both men broke the former fastest mark in Beppu-Oita by a Japanese man, Takayuki Nishida's 2:08:45, and became only the 6th and 7th men to break 2:09 in Beppu-Oita's 62 years.  The rest of the field was 4 minutes back, Kenji Higashino (Team Asahi Kasei) taking 3rd in a PB of 2:12:13 and Australian Michael Shelley the only non-Japanese to make the top ten as he finished 6th in 2:13:12.

In post-race comments Kawauchi was effusive in showing his respect for Nakamoto, who for his part was shattered to have met one of his pre-race goals without the other.  Asked about his future plans, Kawauchi said, "I haven't completely decided yet, but based on today I might not run Lake Biwa and instead go for 2:07 at the Seoul Marathon." Kawauchi missed the Federation's hubristic sub-2:08 requirement for guaranteed World Championships team selection, but having achieved his own goal of beating Horibata's 2:08:24 he is now the front-runner to make the team.  Between his 6th at the Olympics and his best today Nakamoto also seems like a lock barring truly historic races in Tokyo and Lake Biwa.

Kawauchi's breakthrough 2:08:37 in Tokyo in 2011 lit fires under the collective asses of the Japanese industry and played a major role in getting the system to the point where it is now.  What effect is his 2:08:15 today, a time only fellow independent Arata Fujiwara (Miki House) has broken since before the Beijing Olympics, going to have in 2013? Kawauchi made the choice to come back to the site of his marathon debut and Nakamoto to a course that had given him a PB early in his career, and both rewarded their fans and the organizers of a small but historic event with something that people will talk about for years.

2013 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon
Oita, 2/3/13
click here for complete results

Men
1. Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref.) - 2:08:15 - CR, PB
2. Kentaro Nakamoto (Team Yasukawa Denki)  - 2:08:35 - PB
3. Kenji Higashino (Team Asahi Kasei) - 2:12:13 - PB
4. Yoshiki Otsuka (Team Aichi Seiko) - 2:12:51 - PB
5. Masahiro Ishida (Team Sagawa Express) - 2:13:07 - PB
6. Michael Shelley (Australia) - 2:13:12
7. Yu Chiba (Team Honda) - 2:13:19 - PB
8. Naoya Hashimoto (Team Chudenko) - 2:14:36
9. Masanori Sakai (Team Kyudenko) - 2:14:44 - debut
10. Tomoyuki Sato (Team Asahi Kasei) - 2:16:05
11. Tewelde Estifanos (Eritrea) - 2:16:13 - debut
12. Shigeki Tsuji (Team Otsuka Seiyaku) - 2:16:21
13. Ben Moreau (GBR) - 2:16:54
14. Takashi Toyoda (Team Honda) - 2:17:01
15. Abdelkrim Boubker (Morocco) - 2:17:14
---
18. Ser-Od Bat-Ochir (Mongolia) - 2:17:47
65. Brad Milosevic (Australia) - 2:32:57
DNF - Yoshihisa Hosaka (Natural Foods AC)

Women
1. Chiyuki Mochizuki (Canon AC Kyushu) - 2:40:11
2. Megumi Yamashita (Team Toto) - 2:40:49
3. Chie Yamada (Fukuoka T&F Assoc.) - 2:54:46
4. Miyuki Kaneko (AC Kita) - 2:56:44
5. Hiromi Yoshida - 2:57:28

(c) 2013 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Comments

JY said…
Kawauchi is back!
His willpower in last 10km impressed me again.
TokyoRacer said…
Yes, he certainly seemed to want it more than Nakamoto did.
John Downes said…
Brett your description of this race is brilliant.Kawauchi is one tough mother and this is the sort of athlete I love. No quarter asked and none given. Huge respect. I worked on a building site and ran 5k in 13.29 and considered myself tough,but this guy is in a league if his own. SUBARASHI.
Brett Larner said…
Special thanks to JRN associate editor Mika Tokairin for her live coverage of Beppu-Oita yesterday.
Brett Larner said…
Re: LRC's comment on the Meb-Ritz analogy, Hall would be Fujiwara in this picture.
John said…
Really great recap, Brett. Thanks much. Great competition.
Joe, Shanghai said…
What a RACE!
Great write-up! Really enjoyed it. ^^
Anonymous said…
A special vote of thanks to you, Mika and Brett, for your coverage of this great race. It was some entertainment for a Sunday morning. Kawauchi and Nakamoto ran a race that shows other people why they should be glued to the screen (even the little KeyHole TV screen) to watch the marathon. When I run my next marathon and run out of gas, I will remember of Kawauchi's grimace towards the finish and find extra energy from that. Cheers Brett and keep it up!
John Downes said…
Hi Brett just a question,how much treatment,physio,osteopathy and injury prevention work do the Japanese do. Keep up the great work.
Brett Larner said…
John--

Thanks for the comments. Massage, acupuncture, physio and the like are regular parts of most Japanese athletes' routines. Exactly what and how much varies, of course.
runninintokyo said…
I have to wonder what Kawauchi could do if he didn't race so much. BTW, love your blog and your tweets. Thanks for providing a great service to all of us running geeks!

Most-Read This Week

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

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

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