My running carrot

I just finished reading The Way of the Runner: A Journey into the Fabled World of Japanese Running by English journalist Adharanand Finn.

He travels to Japan and visits a monastery where monks run a thousand marathons in a thousand days in search of spiritual enlightenment; and trains with university and corporate teams who compete in the lucrative and prestigious ekiden - a long distance run covered by a team rather than an individual.

He surmises that the team environment of the ekiden encourages competitors to beyond what they could as an individual, and vows to test this theory. But...