The Marugame Half Marathon 2020 took place in Marugame City Kagawa Prefecture on the 4th largest island of Japan, Shikoku. It's a quiet town whose main industry is production of 'udon' which is thick noodles made of floor, but today this small local town was filled with athletic enthusiasm!
The race progressed at sub-1-hour half marathon pace, and Brett Robinson of Australia won by slowly spreading the margin from the rest of the leading group of hour with a couple of kilometers remaining. His winning time is 59:57.
The runner-up is Yusuke Ogura (小椋祐介) of Yakuruto. His time one hour flat is the new best half-marathon time of Japan. He wasn't even a guest runner, and yet beat the second Japanese to finish, Taku Fujimoto of Toyota, whose 1:00:06 is also an improvement from the previous best time held by Yuta Shitara of Honda, who finished 6th today.
Brett Robinson is one of the best Australian long-distance runners. He was invited to Vienna last October 12 as one of the pacers to bring Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya to the human race's first sub-2 marathon finish. Brilliant job, Brett! Your strong spurt was a sheer inspiration!
Also big thumbs up to Yusuke Ogura, who was completely unmarked until the last 3 K when the leading group was limited to just four runners. He maneuvered through the race fairly cleverly by remaining stealthy at the back of the pack. But he put on a spurt in the last 500 meters, overtook Taku Fujimoto, and even 2017 champion Callum Hawkins of the UK, and finished strongly only 3 seconds behind the winner. Good job, Yusuke! You are the man! In an interview after the race he said he was happy with the result but he wants more. Today he just followed the pace set by other runners. He wants to be able to set the pace to control the race. Now that's a pretty ambitious statement. He looks very high testosterone, fiercely competitive, and has high expectations of himself. He is running the Tokyo Marathon 2020 on March 1st. He wants to be the 1st Japanese finisher by running the best Japanese time to be the 3rd guy to run the marathon in the summer Olympics. Let's see how he'll do.
The race was enjoyable thanks to the commentary by Mr. Tetsuhiko Kin (金哲彦). As always he treated everyone with respect, and his comments were never biased. He treated everyone fairly. But that doesn't not mean his commentary is too neutral and boring. In fact, he is tremendously encouraging, and enthusiastic. His love of long-distance running is evident in every single word that he utters. He genuinely admire every single runner's every single effort to aim higher and work harder. Thanks, Kin san (as he is affectionately called by every citizen runner), the program was super exciting thanks to you!
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