Running an ekiden in Japan

I have had the priviledge of running in an ekiden in Japan and this is very special to me. In Japan ekidens are taken very seriously. What is an ekiden you may ask? An ekiden is a running relay in which members of the team pass a sash to each other and not a baton. This sash is usually draped across the body. Usually in ekiden each team member usually gives more than 100 percent and is practically dying before he or she passes the sash. This is how serious ekiden is in Japan. Another indication of the seriousness of ekiden in Japan is that a number of them are televised live nationally. The ekiden that I competed in was the East Japan International Ekiden this is an elite ekiden with teams from all over Japan and some foreign teams. The club I raced for was composed of Canadians, Americans, and French. I raced two times that day both legs that I ran in were 5k. You know when you are in the wrong race or you should not be racing at all when at least 6 other people in your race have PR's 2 minutes faster than yours and it is just 5k. That is DANGER!! or ABUNAI!! as Japanese like to say. I did manage to race my guts out that day and came in 4th and 10th not bad for my first ekiden. In my first race the masters race the over 40 division I ran 15:52 and was amazed of the quality of competition for old guys in Japan. I believe the first guy was timed at 15:32 that is one fast old dude. My second go round I was able to rise to the occasion 2.5 hours later and run 15:50 but that was a whole another race completely I believe first place that day was 14:02 YIKES!! that is fast. My team Namban Rengo still manage to hold on to 10th place through out the relay and we were very excited about that. 10th place out of 125 teams is pretty damn good even though the gap between us and first place was some where out in the stratosphere. I love that memory and I just had to share that.