Ekiden Relay – Review

Fellow runner and a fifth of the winning Team Brooks Thailand, Craig Sauers, shares his thoughts on the Ekiden Relay, held in Bangkok on October the 23rd.

The alarm clock rings before dawn. You roll out of bed, get dressed in the dark, fumble around for your shoes and keys. You stuff a couple hundred baht into the pocket in your short-tights. For as many days as you run with a group, you just as often run with only the company of the devil on your shoulder, the one that tells you, “Hey, man. You can take it easy today. No one’s watching.”

Today will be different. At least that’s what you hope.

Running is a lonely pursuit. That sense of loneliness amplifies when racing. As sweat saturates your jersey and your shoes start to make that embarrassing squishing sound with every plodding step, you try to focus on your breathing or catching the runner in front of you, but ultimately you’re left running by yourself — for yourself. So you run with urgency. You calculate paces in your mind. You imagine the number of strides left until you cross the finish line. It’s no easy business being a runner.

But every so often a race like EKIDEN comes along, a relatively new event in Thailand that pits team against team, and you get to be part of something bigger. Fond memories of camaraderie excite you. In fact, they remind you that working together always trumps working solo. You agree to meet your training partner at the unhealthy hour of 4:30 am to catch a taxi to Suan Rot Fai.

When the first runner on your team kicks off the festivities, you’re still a little sleepy. You wonder how long it will take before he finishes his leg. The sun comes up, but the sky is still painted a shade of gray. It’s overcast and cool. You crowd the path with runners from the other teams, clapping as hard as you can for the ten brief seconds before your teammate disappears into the park.

Your second teammate takes the EKIDEN sash. He moves quickly. You’re really into it now. Those long morning runs are a distant memory. All of a sudden you feel rejuvenated. As your teammate circles back, lap after lap, you find yourself cheering uncontrollably. Then, you find yourself cheering on the other teams—the ones you’re supposed to be competing against—and you realize how lucky you are to be a runner in Thailand, despite the occasional solitude-related troubles.

Your teammate passes the sash to you. It’s wet — very wet — but you know it’s only going to get wetter by the time you’re done with it.

Three laps. That’s all. By this point, you have no idea if your team is in first, second, or ninth place, but you’re giving it your all, racing against an internal clock, running for your teammates until your lungs and legs burn. This EKIDEN thing is kind of cool, you think. You cross the line for the third and final lap. Eight women all decked out in pink are shouting, “Whooo! Yeah, all right!” It lifts you up.

When your fourth and fifth runners finish and you discover that you won, you linger in the grass until the awards (which are going to happen at 10:30, much later than you expected). You’re talking with your friend, Mr. Run Thailand himself, and eating a cupcake that a kindhearted young girl offered to you after the race. You have frosting in your beard. You say, “You know what’s great about the EKIDEN? No one trained specifically for this race. Absolutely no one here said, ‘This is it! This is what I’ve been working so hard for all these months!’ But it doesn’t matter. This race was a blast.”

Yes, no one trained for the EKIDEN, you think. We came out for fun, for a mid-week workout treat with our friends on a Thai holiday, to run with and for other people, and that’s precisely what we got.

/Craig Sauers