Noguchi wins 3rd Kobe Women’s Half Marathon

11 November 2003In her first race since winning the Marathon silver medal at the World Championships in Paris, Mizuki Noguchi ran and won the third edition of Kobe Women’s Half Marathon with 1:09:52 on Sunday 9 November.

Noguchi is already selected for the Japanese Olympic marathon team, and so unlike all the other top Japanese marathon runners aiming to qualify for the Olympic marathon team, Noguchi does not need to run another Marathon before Athens. So instead as the part of the preparation for the Athens Olympic marathon, she has put in place a number of Half Marathons in the next few months of which Kobe was the first.

Although Tegla Loroupe of Kenya, the former fastest women’s runner of all-time, was also in the invited field, the race became essentially a time trial for Noguchi.  She took the lead almost immediately and passed 5Km in 16:07.  By then the chase pack consists of Tegla Loroupe, Mizuho Nasukawa, Megumi Kobayashi and Kozue Saito was already 33 seconds behind Noguchi.

Noguchi went through 10Km in 32:34 (16:27), and by 13Km she led Loroupe by a minute and 16 seconds, who in turn led Nasukawa by a second. Noguchi continued to extend her lead, passing 15Km in 49:20 (16:46) and 20Km in 1:06:17 (16:57), and covered the last 1.0975Km in 3:35 to finish in 1:09:52.  Finishing second 2 minutes 1 second behind was Tegla Loroupe.  

Pre-Athens “the plan is to go for the high altitude training in Kunming, China for the base training, “explained Noguchi’s coach Nobuyuki Fujita. “Then after I will train in Japan for a while, the final preparation for Athens probably will be in Europe, most likely in Saint Moritz (where Noguchi prepared for Paris).”

”However, it is not a good idea to go directly to Athens from Saint Moritz because the temperature differential is too great.  So I have to find a transition location, where the temperature is half way between Saint Moritz and Athens.”
 
Fujita wants Noguchi to run another marathon before the Olympics, perhaps sometime during the winter.  However, Noguchi does not want to run a highly competitive race like Osaka Ladies Marathon, and at the moment is still searching for the proper marathon to run.

Ken Nakamura for the IAAF
with assistance from Akihiro Onishi in Kobe

Weather Rain:  Temperature: 14.5C

1) Mizuki Noguchi 1:09:52
2) Tegla Loroupe (KEN) 1:11:53
3) Mizuho Nasukawa 1:11:58
4) Megumi Kobayashi 1:12:18
5) Kozue Saito 1:12:42 
6) Masayo Kobayashi 1:13:09