Over the last year or two it’s become more and more essential for teams to be more than just a group of people. Earlier this year, members of Footpatrol and Your Friendly Running Club teamed up with ASICS to take part in their London 10km race that weaves its way through some of the most iconic streets of London. For 2021, we’ve once again been asked to take part in their latest running venture… they must like putting us through our paces! 

The Ekiden is a 100 year old Japanese relay race with the name meaning, “relaying station”. Celebrating movement, the race was based, leading from the old capital of Kyoto to the new Tokyo. Using multiple team members, the Ekiden is essentially a long-distance relay race. A team event where teamwork is deep within the heart of the race. Each member passes on a traditional sash or tasuki to symbolise the next leg of the race.

With the difficulties of the last couple of years and people being apart from one another, ASICS have made this 2021 race virtual. An opportunity for you and your wider friends, family colleagues to come together as one to complete this challenge. It’s also been the perfect opportunity to find balance and focus within your mind. We’ve all heard people say running is great for the mind but after this, really, it is! Listening to your body (and a podcast/music), its a great way to see the outdoors, discover new things where ever you live and of course stay fit both mentally and physically.

Set at a marathon distance, this virtual race was made up of teams of six to complete different amounts of set distances in a particular order. A 5km, 5km, 10km, 5km, 10km and finishing with a 7.2km. This gave us at Footpatrol the opportunity to connect with one another and to push each other on to complete our individual goals. It also gave us an opportunity to push this idea of ‘team work’ and ‘virtual’ to the test with many of us not being in the same location. Bradley found himself visiting family in Spain, Sam was back home in Birmingham and Footpatrol Paris member Tancrede was at home in Paris whilst Jake, Sam and Henry were able to take part in London. 

With each team member taking it in turns, once completed a notification would ping the next person instructing them they had been handing the Tasuki and it was now their turn.

As a team, we completed the 42.195km distance in 3:10:44, finishing in 328 out of 6047 teams worldwide.