A 24-Hour Relay Marathon You Won’t Find Anywhere Else
2017.12.26
I am a Thai student, studying in the Department of Biopharmaceutics and Drug Metabolism at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. I study drug delivery systems, or, to put it simply, how medicine is distributed throughout the body.
When you’re studying abroad in Japan, there are a lot of exciting experiences, and you can make a lot of great memories. For me, one of those memories is a 24 hour relay race.
Attempting the 24-Hour Relay Marathon
When you’re studying in Japan, you’re required to enter either a graduation seminar, or a lab. In a seminar/lab setup, students study in a small group format, holding discussions with a few students and a professor. For the most part, we spend all of our time researching, but we do have events from time to time, like a welcome parties, dinners, sake parties, birthday parties, and so on. This photo is of my birthday party. The present I was given is my secret!
I participated in a lot of events to get to know my lab mates better, but the most memorable one for me was joining Osaka Prefecture’s 24-hour relay marathon with everyone.
This event is held every year, but this I’ve participated four times. Well… I’m counting times that I cheered my teammates on without running, too, but…
Just like the name says, the 24-Hour Relay Marathon is an event in which participants run for a full twenty-four hours. Of course, everyone isn’t running for twenty-four hours straight on their own: people take turns running one lap (or two), before trading off. One lap is about 1.4 kilometers, and is run by ten people, so it usually takes just over an hour to finish it.
Barbecue-ing and Marathon-ing at the same time
During break periods, we made a camp and had a barbecue. We grilled our favorite kinds of meat, vegetables, and yakisoba noodles, and spent a really fun night sharing food together.
