WHEN THE TEAM IS THE GOAL
It was 7 am and Rei was still in bed. Her eyes were looking at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her mind was following each step of the 3.8km he had to run later that day in the Princess Ekiden (relay) Corporate Marathon of Fukuoka. She took her phone as she had just received a text message. It was Marie, her best friend and a relay runner in her team later that day. “hi Rei, are you up? I am so nervous. Will we make it to the national competition?”. “Of course! 😊 ”. She replied. “See you in an hour downstairs”. Both lived in Fukuoka’s university dorm, were 19-year-old and had met last year as they both started working some hours a week for Iwatani Sangyo corporation in an internship. Marie was the one that had seen the internal announcement looking for runners for the famous marathon. It was six months ago and they had trained very hard. Their goal to qualify for the national competition did not seem too far away according to the most experimented runners in the team who had partic...