Hello from The Little Red Dot + My first ekiden
14 Jan
Hi everyone, sorry for the lapse in posts this month. I’m still away from Tokyo and right now I’m in Singapore. I’m attending a friend’s wedding plus I need to settle some of my own wedding plans. One of my weddings (yes, I’m having two!) will be here so it makes sense to get into Bridezilla mode for a bit.
I really want to talk about my Sydney travels but I wasn’t so organized to get a gadgety thing to import photos directly from my camera to my iPad. I’ve even tried to re-size my photos on my sister’s PC (yikes, I’m actually using one!) but to no avail.
So today, I’ll share with you another “first” experience I had in before my holiday: my first ekiden, which means relay in Japanese. Ekidens are extremely popular in Japan and I can see why because Japanese society is very group-centred so to have group running events is actually a natural “anomaly”.
If you have been following my blog or Facebook for sometime, you would know that I’ve been obsessed with running as a hobby since last year. So far, I’ve signed up for two half-marathons in Feb and one full one in March. Unfortunately, I twisted my right ankle badly in Sydney a week ago so I’ve had to do away with any exercise and avoided going to the beach. How sad was that? I even bought a new bikini and only used it once. But I’m almost 100% well. I have instructions from my accupuncturist/tui na massage therapist to soak my affected foot in hot water till it cools to room temperature after I strip off my stinky herbal ankle patch. For four days, the kangaroo had to sleep next to me and my pungent foot.
Anyway, let’s get back to the ekiden: the group I went with had two teams and each had four runners who ran 10km, 5km, 3km, and 5km in that order. I’m not the fastest of runners so I took the 3km leg. I was nervous as hell. It’s been years since I ran in any kind of competition. Heck, I must’ve been 10 when I competed in my school’s Sports’ Day.
I took random pictures while I was waiting for my turn.
Lots of people were jogging lightly to warm up. I did a round or two myself.
The stadium that the ekiden was held at was in Shin-kiba, which is a 25 minute train ride from my neighbourhood.
See the green dividers? They were holding bays for runners to pass on the team sash to the next person. You can’t see it from the photo, because I took it way before the action began, but the excitement was palpable with hundreds of people squished together cranning their necks while looking out for their team members. Sometimes the crowd pushed over the line on the track so the “bouncers” had to tell us to move back into the bays.
These were the runners for the 10km leg. We noticed that there were hardly any women…well, because men tend to run faster than women. ‘Tis a fact in the running world, I suppose. But in my 3km leg, there were a good mix of men and women.
I think our team did fairly well and the best part was getting to know other runners who are into race events and marathons. I was exhausted after the entire thing although I ran such a short distance. Perhaps it was all the excitement and running fast for a short distance is more tiring than running slowly for a long distance.
Have you experienced a “first” recently?
No related posts.
Seems like you had a lot of fun in the ekiden.
I’m sorry to hear that you twisted your ankle. It’s never a good time to do that but the timing of this couldn’t have been any worse since you were away on a trip and planning to run in marathons just a month or two away. Take care and heal quickly!
Two weddings! My son will be having two also–one home in Hawaii in June and another in Japan in July. It’s been waaay too long but I’ll finally be going to Japan again. I’m looking forward to it.
Good luck with your wedding plans as well. It’s double the stress since you’re planning two!
congrats on completing your ekiden! i hope your wedding plans go well.. i understand the stress of it all!
Thanks nic! Hope your wedding preparations are going well too
Hey kat, thanks for your well wishes. My ankle is much better and I can’t wait to start jogging again. Congrads on your son vetting married!! How exciting is that to have one in Hawaii (always beautifullll!) and one in Japan.
I think I would need medical attention if I ran a kilometer. I can climb walls for 2 hours, but running, umm, no. I hope there were lots of medical professionals around!