Japanese Teams Wrapping Up Boulder Training Camps Athletes targeting

Japan National Championships and Sapporo Half-Marathon

 


June 18, 2009


Half a dozen Japanese corporate-sponsored teams and a delegation from the JAAF are wrapping up their high-altitude training camps in Boulder, Colorado, this week. Over the past month, about 40 top Japanese athletes and coaches from various Japanese clubs, including Tenmaya, Shiseido, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), Toyota Auto Body, ACOM, Dai-ichi Life Insurance, and legendary coach Yoshio Koide’s Sakura AC have been piling up the miles and the track sessions in Boulder and at the 8500-foot (2500m) altitude of famed Magnolia Road in the mountains west of Boulder.

Shiseido’s head coach Tsutomu Hiroyama and his women wrap up a session of 1000m repeats



The Japanese Association of Athletic Federations (JAAF) underwrote the training camp expenses for three of the country’s top women marathoners: Yurika Nakamura (2:25:51) and Tomo Morimoto (2:24:33) of the Tenmaya team, and Yoshiko Fujinaga (2:28:13) of Shiseido. Yurika was 13th at last summer’s Beijing Olympic marathon at age 22, Tomo is the alternate for this summer’s Japanese women’s marathon team for the Berlin World Championships, and Yoshiko gained selection to represent Japan in Berlin by way of her win in this spring’s Nagoya women’s marathon.


Among other top athletes in Boulder this month have been Hiromi Ominami and her twin sister Takami; 2008 Tokyo International Ladies Marathon champ Yoshimi Ozaki (also prepping for the Berlin championships); and Yukari Sahaku (2nd in this spring’s Tokyo Marathon).


On the men’s side, having assumed the head coaching job of a men‘s team last year for the first time in his coaching career, 1991 world championships marathon gold medalist Hiromi Taniguchi brought his Tepco men to Boulder’s altitude. For Taniguchi, it was the first visit to Colorado since the

This summer, Shiseido’s Aki Fujikawa will run the 10,000m at the Japan National Championships, the Sapporo Half-Marathon, and the Hokkaido Marathon

summer of 1993. “I always wanted to come back here, but was never in a coaching position before where I could make the decision.”


Tenmaya’s Nakamura, a Boulder Wave athlete, looks to be in great shape to for Japan’s 10,000m championship next week. She had a tremendous training camp in Boulder, and is coming off a spring season in which she was 2nd at the Oda memorial meet 5000m in 15:23.99 and 2nd at the Hyogo Relay Carnival 10000m in 32:13.89. Earlier in the year she gained selection for this autumn’s IAAF World Half-Marathon Championship by taking 3rd overall and top Japanese in the Japanese Corporate Half-Marathon Championships. Similarly, Koide’s 21 year old protégé Hitomi Niiya, who just edged out Nakamura for the win at Oda, departs from Boulder with the 5000m race in her sites.

Coaches Shogo Naganuma (ACOM), Tsutomu Hiroyama (Shiseido), and Yutaka Taketomi (Tenmaya) take in the rays in Boulder. All three have been bringing their athletes to Boulder for over a decade, and oversaw this month’s JAAF training camp



Aside from the marathoners, most of the athletes have been prepping for next week’s Japan National Championships, which will be held in Hiroshima’s Big Arch stadium from June 25th to 28th, with others targeting the July 5th Sapporo Half-Marathon.




















                                                               




                                                              



                                                                       Some of the gang after this month’s final track session at altitude!