Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% 'Ekiden Zoom Pack'
Colorway: Aurora/Black/Summit White/Hyper Crimson · Style code: CD4553-300 · Release date: July 16, 2020 · Price: $189 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike ZoomX VaporFly NEXT% 'Sail' (CT9133-100) · Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 'Black' (AO4568-001) · Nike ZoomX VaporFly Next% 3 'Prototype' (DX7957-100) · Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% 2 'Rawdacious' (DJ5457-100) · Nike ZoomX VaporFly Next% 4 'Ghost' (HF6414-001)
An ekiden is a road relay, and the word is older than the sport. It is written with the characters for station and convey, borrowed from the courier network that once moved messages between post stations along Japan's highways. The first one was staged in 1917, sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun to mark fifty years since Tokyo became the capital: three days, twenty-three stages, 507 kilometers from Kyoto to Tokyo.
What gets handed over is not a baton but a tasuki, a cloth sash worn across the chest and passed to the next runner at the end of each leg. The Hakone Ekiden, run every January over 219 kilometers by teams of ten university runners across two days, draws a television audience on a scale distance running rarely sees.
This pair comes from a five-shoe set Nike built around that racing culture, and takes its teal from Japan's bullet trains. Underneath the color it is a marathon racer: a VaporWeave upper that resists soaking, a ZoomX midsole, and a carbon-fiber plate running its full length.