As track season rolled on with the Oda Memorial Meet in Hiroshima and the Nobeoka Spring Time Trials Meet in Nobeoka on April 29, the biggest news came in the Oda women's 5000 m. Kenyan ace Sally Chepyego (Team Kyudenko), the 2001 World Junior Championships gold medalist over 3000 m, set her third PB of the month with a new clocking of 15:13.09, a meet record. Just behind her and also under the hold meet record, Hitomi Niiya, the 2007 Tokyo Marathon winner at age 18, came in with a 6-second PB of 15:17.84, 0.02 seconds faster than national record holder Kayoko Fukushi's best time of 2010 and the leading time by a Japanese woman thus far in the lead-up to August's World Championships. What made Niiya's run big news was that she appeared running for Chiba Prefecture rather than for her sponsor since graduating from high school, 2008 national champions Team Toyota Jidoshokki.
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