Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Ranting Again (This may become a habit)

Who thought it was a good idea to have a road race of 55,000 people? I'm still not sure why I entered the Sun Run this year but I would be very surprised if you ever caught me doing this race again. I had a bad day.

I parked at Trev and Shanty's and had a nice brisk walk to the start. I met some co-workers at the Skytrain station and after taking a photo or two we tried to get to the starting corrals. I was supposed to start with the green bibs and got caught in a crowd like no other. After getting separated from my run buddies (argh), I found myself with no hope of getting anywhere near the green corral. By that I mean I was about 12 feet from the entrance but there were so many bodies between me and it that I had no choice but to wait. The starting gun went off at 9:00. I was finally able to start moving towards the green corral at 9:25.

There was one (actually way more than one but here is the biggest one) panicky moment as we surged forward. Somebody somewhere stumbled and the ripple effect meant that we all staggered. I thought, oh here we go I am going to get trampled to death, but luckily we all managed to stay upright. My heart rate monitor probably registered the moment of terror... I will have to check it!

I finally crossed the start line and... bam. People started walking almost immediately. What the hell were they doing classing themselves as green if they can't even run a block? We were supposed to be the group that finished between 48 min and 1 hr. I also tripped over a stroller (against the rules) and I was constantly cut off by people trying to dodge the walkers and misjudging and running into guess who? Me.

I grumbled for a few kilometers, especially at those who were running all smiley and crap. Then I spotted a JR Direct corporate team shirt ahead sported by a friend of mine. So I ran up behind him and just as he slowed at the water station I bolted past and yelled "You suck Kris!" No response from him and I lost sight of him since it's not easy to run backwards with 55,000 of your closest friends. I stopped to pee in a fantastic (and by fantastic I mean just about as disgusting as you would expect at a mega-event that involves a lot of half-digested PowerBars) Porta-Potty and he must have passed me. Never fear, I saw the shirt ahead of me again so this time when I passed him I yelled "I'm going to kick your ass Kris!" In retrospect, Kris/Chris is a fairly common name so this may have been somewhat startling to my fellow runners. Especially since most of them were not in the same pissed-off mental state and they seemed to actually be enjoying themselves. And since Kris was wearing his iPod and didn't respond yet again leaving me looking (sounding) somewhat ridiculous, I decided to skip the trash-talking part of my race and concentrate on my feet for a while. Plod plod plod and finally I crossed the finish line. Sucktastic.

What a waste of a morning. But luckily in all the hours I was gone the boys and Mike managed to accomplish the grand old task of getting dressed, so it was a successful Sunday on all counts I'd say. We did build our fancy new BBQ that afternoon, though, and have enjoyed a few meals grilled to perfection since then.

Update: Finally figured out why my race sucked. It was too cold to wear my new kick-ass running skort. Obviously the day would have gone way differently if I could have looked a little more Fierce.

1 comment:

Cathy said...

Was this the run you've been training for for long time, that you had big goals? If so, sorry it turned out crummy. Eric and I participated in Race for the Cure last spring, in excess of 40,000, and I left calling it Mosey For the Cure. He's doing Mini-marathon this weekend, 13 1/2 miles for 35,000 people, took him over 1/2 hour to cross the start line too.