The 100th Hakone Ekiden by the Numbers – Brett Larner – Japan Running News

Yamamoto won the 100th Hakone’s MVP award for breaking the uphill Fifth Stage record for the second year in a row, but there’s no question that the biggest runs of the 100th Hakone were on the 21.4 km Third Stage. 1500 m, 3000 m, 5000 m and 10000 m U20 NR holder Keita Sato ran an amazing 1:00:13, equivalent to a 59:22 half marathon, 38 seconds under the NR and beating the previous fastest-ever by a Japanese athlete by 42 seconds in his first attempt at a distance longer than 11.1 km. Given how he ran in his 27:28.50 debut for 10000 m in November that wasn’t a major surprise, but in a stunning upset AGU’s Aoi Ota ran him down to take the lead, clocking 59:47, only 22 seconds off Vincent Yegon’s CR and equivalent to a 58:56 half marathon.

It’s hard to understand how he did it. The Third Stage is downhill at the beginning, but there was no substantial wind, and Ota’s 5000 m and 10000 m bests were only 13:53.10 and 28:20.63 compared to Sato’s 13:22.91 and 27:28.50. There was nothing there to suggest that Ota was capable of running over a minute faster than the Japanese half marathon NR, except maybe that he was wearing the new Adidas Adizero Pro Evo 1. Given the kinds of times everyone else ran on the Third Stage it’s safe to say that while AGU was strong overall, the majority of its final 2:17 under the old overall CR came thanks to Ota.

Ignoring the two mountain stages and normalizing the other 20.9 km to 23.1 km stages to the half marathon distance, a total of 67 people ran the equivalent of a sub-63 half marathon, exactly the same as last year, and 40 ran sub-62, the same as in 2022. The slowest of the 23 runners on then 21.3 km First Stage, Ryuto Hirashima of Nittai University, ran the equivalent of 1:02:59 compared to his half marathon PB of 1:03:47. A total of 15 people ran the equivalent of sub-61 and 2 sub-60, both new records, and Ota followed Yegon as the second Hakone runner in history under 59 minutes. For comparison, out of the 41 men on the 21.9 km long stage at the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden national corporate championships, with a strong tailwind 37 ran the equivalent of sub-63, 29 went sub-62, 12 sub-61 and 2 sub-60. Stage winner Tomoki Ota of champion team Toyota ran 59:25, 3 seconds slower than Komazawa’s Sato.

All 40 runners who ran sub-62 at Hakone, with their half marathon PBs in parentheses and the equivalent half marathon to what they ran on their Hakone: