The 35th annual Osaka Women’s Marathon, an IAAF Silver Label Road Race, is one of the four qualifying races to select the Japanese marathon team for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, so most of the attention of the local fans will be focused on the domestic runners on Sunday (31).

The ninth edition of the Tokyo Marathon will be contested on Sunday (22) with both Olympic champions on the startline of the IAAF Gold Label Road Race.

The image of all five of the Kenyan team running in a line at the front of the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships women's race, eyes front, arms pumping in unison, will remain in the memory of all who witnessed it on what was, in all senses, a glorious day for running in Copenhagen on Saturday (29).

Kenya, as expected, produced a totally dominant performance in the women’s race at the 2014 IAAF/AL-Bank World Half Marathon Championships in Copenhagen as they reclaimed individual and team honours from their Ethiopian rivals.

The relatively novel aspects of this year’s IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Copenhagen – only the second time in the event’s history that it is being held in the spring, and only the second time that the championship race also incorporates a mass participation event following the very first version on Tyneside in 1992 – are likely to be counterbalanced in the women’s race by a return to business as usual on Saturday.

Three years after being soundly beaten into third place at the Sanyo Women’s Half Marathon, Sally Chepyego returned to Okayama on Monday (23) in the hope of a better result. The Kenyan well and truly avenged that defeat and shattered the course record in the process.