My Swiss friend invited me to run an ‘ekiden’ with him and his running group. We had a total of 4 men/women mixed teams of 4 people each running about 5 kilometers. My friend, Daniel, and I were on different teams but we were both running the second lap. I didnt have much time in the previous month to train for the run so I was going into this without any preparation. Daniel’s teammate arrived first and so had a head start. My teammate arrived about 3 minutes later at which point my goal was to catch up with my friend somehow. I started off pretty fast and was passing a lot of people, but around the half-way point I started to cramp up. Regardless, I continued on. Around the 4 kilometer mark I finally caught up with him!, but at that point my stomach was very cramped and I didnt want to run anymore. Yet I kept fighting the pain and kept running trying to keep up with my friend who had a steady pace the entire time. We crossed the line and handed it off to the next runner about the same time. I sat down to rest.

My overall time for the 5k was about 22 minutes.

My team.

My friend.

The starting runners.