Skip to main content

Hayakari Opens Season at Mt. SAC Relays (updated)

by Brett Larner



Japanese women's 3000 m steeplechase national record holder Minori Hayakari (Kyoto Koka AC) opened her 2009 season on Apr. 16 at the Mt. SAC Relays meet in Walnut, CA. Hayakari started aggressively, running in 3rd through a 77-second first lap. She held to precisely the same for the following two laps, clocking 2:34 and 3:51, but slipped backwards through the pack as the overall pace quickened behind breakaway leader Lindsey Anderson (Nike). Falling as low as 11th, Hayakari had a characteristically strong finish to move back up to 8th. Her time of 10:10.18 was far off last summer's national record of 9:33.93 but a good start to her World Championships buildup nevertheless.

Hayakari wrote about her race on her blog shortly afterwards:

The Mt. SAC Relay meet started on Apr. 16 and a lot of Japanese athletes are here. I ran the 3000 m SC in 10:10.18. My self-evaluation is.....maybe it was a little too sloppy, but I don't really care about the time or the result because it was the kind of practice I can only get in an overseas race and I feel good about it. I mean things like how to warm up properly, the tension before a race, being able to finish after jumping over 35 steeples, actually racing against other people, and understanding my current condition and which points need to be improved. Something like that. Anyway, I felt good afterwards. I went to have some microbrew beer with Daichi [Sawano] and Coach Yonekura (in the States, if you're Japanese they really check closely how old you are on your ID!) We talked about how the next time we drink microbrew beer together it'll be in Berlin. That's pretty good motivation.

Complete results from the women's invitational 3000 m SC are available here.

(c) 2009 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Comments

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