Blog of RENAULT NISSAN Alliance

One week after they left the Champs Elysées in Paris, the 19-strong team of Renault-Nissan Alliance runners are well on their way to their final destination, Togliatti in Russia… some 4,000kms away.

The aim of the run is to promote human values and team spirit within the Alliance and to highlight the power of the partnership: Togliatti is the home of the AVTOVAZ manufacturing complex, a joint venture which is on target to build 1.7 million Nissan, Renault and Lada vehicles a year.

Run as a relay event, the plan is to cover the distance in 17 days. The runners are split into three teams (one running, one resting and the third leapfrogging the others to the next starting point) with individuals each running between 10 and 15 kms a time before handing the baton onto a colleague.

So far everything is going to plan. By Day 4, the team had arrived in Berlin, some 1,000 kms from Paris and some quick calculations revealed that by Day 5, each member of the squad had run the equivalent of two marathons each and had already reached Poland.

So far things have gone fairly smoothly. The teams have had to battle with some bad weather, an agressive owl attracted to a night runner’s torch (!) and the occasional wrong turn while there have been a few sprained ankles and tired limbs. Generally, though, the atmosphere is extremely positive.

Russian runner Andrey Soldatov, powertrain quality manager at AVTOVAZ, summed it up at the end of Day 6 by saying: “Early morning is my favourite time for running, because nature and the sun are waking up and you can see the start of the new day – a new life beginning. As for difficulties, when you are part of a team, problems are just part of the daily routine that everyone helps to manage.”

The event has its own Facebook page (Click here) on which the team posts pictures and updates while colleagues and friends taking it easy back home can send their encouragement and support.

We will be following their progress all the way, so come back in a few days time to see how far the runners have got.