Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 36 'Ekiden Zoom Pack'
Colorway: Black/Midnight Turquoise/Aurora/Metallic Summit White · Style code: CD4573-001 · Release date: January 2, 2020 · Price: $180 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: GS Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 41 (IH7334-140) · Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 39 'Ekiden Zoom Pack' (DZ4776-343) · Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 38 'Ekiden Zoom Pack' (DO2423-739) · Nike Air Zoom Pegasus (831352-002) · Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 31 (652925-010)
The release date is the detail that gives this one away. Japan's Hakone Ekiden, a two-day collegiate relay, runs on 2 and 3 January every year, and this shoe went on sale on 2 January 2020.
Ekiden is a relay run over roads, split into legs of unequal length, and in Japan it sits closer to a national occasion than to a race. The format dates to 1917, when the Yomiuri Shimbun sponsored a three-day run of roughly 507 kilometres from Kyoto to Tokyo to mark fifty years since the capital moved. The name was taken from the old network of post stations that once relayed messages along those same roads, and what passes between runners is not a baton but a tasuki, a cloth sash worn across the body and handed over at each exchange.
Nike's Ekiden Zoom Pack was five shoes sharing one teal-and-orange scheme, so a team wearing them reads as a set from a distance. The Pegasus 36 is the everyday trainer of the group: engineered mesh with the Flywire cables left exposed, a gradient-painted foam midsole, and a Zoom Air unit running the full length underneath. It sold at $120.