by Pierre Grange (level B2)
EKIDEN: what is it?
Of Japanese origin, the EKIDEN is a relay race of 6 runners.
The first EKIDEN was organized in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century.
Runners had to run the distance from station to station, passing a relay.
For many years, the principle of this race has developed in Europe and particularly in France, in many cities.
Now, the distance of an EKIDEN is the equivalent of a marathon - that is to say, a little more than 42 kilometres.
This year, Grenoble organized its 14th edition, and the UIAD presented its team for a second time.
From left to right : Philippe (our captain), Pierre, Sylvie, Chris and Denis (Glwadys is absent)
Sunday october 8 was the D-day for the dream team of the UIAD.
To remind you, the race took place in Grenoble, in the EUROPOLE district, near the Oxford bridge.
There were a lot of people. More than 3700 runners registered!
The members of each team had to run relays of 5 or 10 kilometres.
For my part, I was registered to run a 10-kilometres relay.
The day of the race, it was sunny. But it was really much too hot to run.
Imagine running on asphalt, in a hot sun, especially around noon! It was very tiring. But we all ran our relay courageously.
I tried to live up to my teammates who are all very good runners.
We even improved the time of last year by 16 minutes!
I shall keep very good memories of this event.
It was a real pleasure to be together and for us, of course, the goal wasn’t to win.
We all had in mind what the Baron Pierre de Coubertin said, about the Olympic Games :
'The most important is to participate'.
And at the end, like many runners, we said to ourselves: 'See you next year!'
Here are some photos of the UIAD team in action :
1st relay between Denis (602.1) and Chris
2nd relay between Chris (602.2) and Sylvie (602.3)
Pierre (4th runner) is very focused on his race
Our fifth runner : smiling Glwadys
And finally, Captain Philippe (6th runner) to finish our EKIDEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment