NEWS ARCHIVE

Kano Takes Women's Title at Rock 'n' Roll San Jose Half-Marathon

Pulls away in final two miles for victory

October 6, 2008

Second Wind AC's Yuri Kano scored her second big half-marathon win of the year yesterday, pulling away from Ethiopia's Azalech Masresha after eleven miles to win the 3rd annual Rock 'n' Roll San Jose Half-Marathon. Coming down from altitude training in Albuquerque, Yuri commented that she came to San Jose looking more for the

win than a fast time. "I didn't really know the other women in the race and did not know how they would compete. I was mainly aiming to win here. I thought if the others are strong, then I'll see how to deal with it during the race. I didn't back off my marathon training too much for this." A lead pack of four women broke down to just Kano and Masresha after 10K, and the two ran together for the next five miles. "Each time I tried to surge a bit, Masresha would also pick up the pace and not let me get away." With a deliberate move after the 11 mile mark, Yuri opened 33 seconds on her 20-year old opponent in the final two miles, to take the win in 70:03. The winning time made Elite Athlete Coordinator Matthew Turnbull look particularly prescient, as he had commented on Saturday evening, " If Yuri run's 70:00 tomorrow, she should win the race."

Yuri's win comes after two other strong half-marathon results this summer, including a 68:57 PB win at the Sapporo Half-Marathon on June 15th, and a 70:31 third-place finish at the New York City Half-Marathon Presented by Nike on July 27th. Her major target this autumn is the November 16th Tokyo International Women's Marathon, which will also be a Japanese qualifying race for next summer's Berlin IAAF World Championships.

“Click here to read the IAAF story on the race.” at the end of our article, the link being:

http://www.iaaf.org/WHM08/news/kind=100/newsid=47940.html

Photos by: Victor Sailor of Photo Run, Inc.