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The 97th qualifying session of the Tokyo Hakone Roundtrip Ekiden University Race (Hakone Ekiden) began on the morning of the 17th at the Tachikawa Station of the Ground Self-Defense Force in the city of Tachikawa, Tokyo. On this occasion, the course will be limited to the camp and will be held without spectators. To prevent the infection of the new corona virus, the organizer and the participating schools joined in the qualifying session.
■ Unusual start
9:35 am. More than 500 runners lined up from the starting line avoiding the “density” ran out with a signal. It seemed that many athletes were running paying attention to the distance from their surroundings so that there was no competition or contact. There is no sound of cheering. The appearance of such a start is a symbol of this race.
In the qualifying session through last year, 12 players from each participating school lined up vertically, and principals from all schools lined up side by side. That completely changed this year.
According to the organizer’s announcement, the 46 participating schools were divided into two groups based on their results from last year. The top 23 schools are in the front block and the remaining 23 schools are in the back block, with each school lined up in a vertical row. There are 12 players in each school. The distance between the people was 2 meters to the left and right and 1 meter to the front and rear.
In other words, the 12 people in the back block started from about 12 meters behind the 12 people in the front block. This is an unusual starting method for a competitive race, where the school in the back block is disadvantageous in terms of time. This year’s grading session was held after each school agreed that it was “unavoidable.”
■ Infection prevention team
Since the Corona disaster, each participating school has done everything possible to prevent clustering.
For example, at Yamanashi Gakuin University, we pay close attention to preventing infections in the dormitory where athletes enter. According to Riaki Iijima, director of Ekiden, when entering the bedroom, not only are their hands washed and the temperature measured, but also “the soles of the shoes are disinfected. We take exhaustive measures because we have a bitter experience in this tournament in 2017. The main players caught the flu before the tournament. Due to the lack of adjustment and not being able to function in production, he lost the seed with the 17th place in the general. For that reason, we paid more attention to the prevention of corona infection and welcomed the qualifying session.
■ Various training grounds
At Surugadai University, top runners, directors and coaches who were on an expedition to Kenya, a long-distance powerhouse, were hit squarely by the crown. The training camp was scheduled from February to the end of March, but due to the Kenyan government blockade (city blockade), it was not possible to return to Japan until mid-April. Team practice resumed in earnest since the beginning of the summer. Director Kazuyoshi Tokumoto looks forward to the growth of the players and says, “Everything is fine for the members who have overcome that.”
For the training camps after the summer, while there are Ekiden teams refraining from expeditions across the prefectural borders, the training camps like Nikkei University said, “I also practiced in Nagano and Hokkaido with the aim to avoid crowded cities. ” There were many claims.
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The qualifying race will finish in just over an hour and the top 10 players will compete for the total time. The top 10 schools will advance to the main tournament in January of next year.
