Run For Your Lives!
May. 27th, 2001 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqSunday was Mother's day, and my tradition is to run in Forzani's Mother's Day Run and Walk. Two years ago I ran the 5K. Last year I ran the 10K. This year I finished in 73m47s. I have mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, I feel like I backslid from last year's fitness level. On the other hand, I enjoyed myself a lot more and I was actually
able to walk the next day.
Here is how the race went. Everyone lined up at the starting gate - all 10,000 of us. The announcement to start went and... everyone stood there. 10,000 people cannot start on a dime and it took awhile for the wave of movement to reach where I was. When it did, everyone immediately started jogging forward... and then stopped as they realized that there was nowhere to run to because there was still a huge mass of people immediately ahead. We started again, walking slowly, then faster and faster. Around this time we crossed the starting line.[According to the Calgary Herald, it took over 15 minutes for everyone to cross the starting line, a point at which the race's winner - final time 30m45s - was at the halfway point] The crowd started to spread out and people started jogging and running.
My strategy was to run to each 1 km marker, then walk for two minutes, repeating until I got to the finish line.
At the 5 km mark I passed Sherrie, a coworker, "I didn't think I'd be passing you" I said (Sherrie is in much better shape than I am, plus she's six feet tall, so I can't even use my long stride as an advantage). She was running with her son Gavin (His first 10 km race), lucky for me she would slow down to allow Gavin to keep up with her. We spent the rest of the race passing each other repeatedly.
On the home stretch, 4th street, the participants encountered the only assholes of the race. The first was a pickup truck that cut across the race route. The driver revved his engine really loudly to let us all know that he was In A Hurry. Jerk.
The other was a heckler [What kind of moron heckles a foot race?]. He was making panting/grunting noises (i.e. like he was out of shape and running a race, G-harf G-harf) as I ran by - he may even have been directing them at me, but I wasn't really paying attention. However, the guy who was running right behind me yelled "Hey fatty, let's see you come out here and run." This shut the heckler up pretty quick.
The jerks were far far outweighed by the great people along the route shouting encouragement, the live bands, the volunteers, the extremely well-organized race officials and especially the people who in Roxboro who aimed their sprinklers at me.[Providing a much appreciated respite from the 25 degree heat.]
Sherrie and Gavin passed me for the last time with only 1 Km left to go. I poured on the speed and ran across the finish line about 50 meters behind them. However, the race was not a simple first-across-the-finish-line contest. All of the participants were given racing chips which measure when you cross the start and finish line and give the difference. As Sherrie, Gavin and I all started out at different times we should have gotten wildly different times.
Monday's paper had the official race results, our standings (place, time and name):
2124, 1:13:47, Sherrie
2125, 1:13:47, James
2126, 1:13:47, Gavin
Sigh, she beat me by less than a second.
Well, I'm going to Vancouver next week, so don't expect anything via email that week. Afterwards, I'll probably talk about my coastal adventures (as opposed to my Postal Adventures, which I can't talk about due to the publication ban the judge put on the whole sordid affair).
able to walk the next day.
Here is how the race went. Everyone lined up at the starting gate - all 10,000 of us. The announcement to start went and... everyone stood there. 10,000 people cannot start on a dime and it took awhile for the wave of movement to reach where I was. When it did, everyone immediately started jogging forward... and then stopped as they realized that there was nowhere to run to because there was still a huge mass of people immediately ahead. We started again, walking slowly, then faster and faster. Around this time we crossed the starting line.[According to the Calgary Herald, it took over 15 minutes for everyone to cross the starting line, a point at which the race's winner - final time 30m45s - was at the halfway point] The crowd started to spread out and people started jogging and running.
My strategy was to run to each 1 km marker, then walk for two minutes, repeating until I got to the finish line.
At the 5 km mark I passed Sherrie, a coworker, "I didn't think I'd be passing you" I said (Sherrie is in much better shape than I am, plus she's six feet tall, so I can't even use my long stride as an advantage). She was running with her son Gavin (His first 10 km race), lucky for me she would slow down to allow Gavin to keep up with her. We spent the rest of the race passing each other repeatedly.
On the home stretch, 4th street, the participants encountered the only assholes of the race. The first was a pickup truck that cut across the race route. The driver revved his engine really loudly to let us all know that he was In A Hurry. Jerk.
The other was a heckler [What kind of moron heckles a foot race?]. He was making panting/grunting noises (i.e. like he was out of shape and running a race, G-harf G-harf) as I ran by - he may even have been directing them at me, but I wasn't really paying attention. However, the guy who was running right behind me yelled "Hey fatty, let's see you come out here and run." This shut the heckler up pretty quick.
The jerks were far far outweighed by the great people along the route shouting encouragement, the live bands, the volunteers, the extremely well-organized race officials and especially the people who in Roxboro who aimed their sprinklers at me.[Providing a much appreciated respite from the 25 degree heat.]
Sherrie and Gavin passed me for the last time with only 1 Km left to go. I poured on the speed and ran across the finish line about 50 meters behind them. However, the race was not a simple first-across-the-finish-line contest. All of the participants were given racing chips which measure when you cross the start and finish line and give the difference. As Sherrie, Gavin and I all started out at different times we should have gotten wildly different times.
Monday's paper had the official race results, our standings (place, time and name):
2124, 1:13:47, Sherrie
2125, 1:13:47, James
2126, 1:13:47, Gavin
Sigh, she beat me by less than a second.
Well, I'm going to Vancouver next week, so don't expect anything via email that week. Afterwards, I'll probably talk about my coastal adventures (as opposed to my Postal Adventures, which I can't talk about due to the publication ban the judge put on the whole sordid affair).
