A Run That’s Right Out of a TV Show
Posted on Apr 27, 2009 under Random | 3 Comments
UCSD Campus Loop: 4.01 Miles: 32:08 (8:02 min/mile)
The other night I was watching According to Jim on TV and his sister-in-law bet him that he could not beat her in the marathon, let alone finish. So what his plan was to start off ridiculously slow and trail off and hide somewhere while everyone else was running the race. He would then re-emerge back into the race and finish just ahead of his sister-in-law. Well, he dozed off during his pedicure (lol) and thought he wasn’t going to make it, so he started running to the finish. As he approached the finish line, he noticed the tape hadn’t been broken through; he was leading the race! The “real” first place runner was right behind him, obviously a lot more tired, so they battled it out and Jim won!
I recently experienced a situation very similar to that, but unintentionally, of course. I was running the campus loop (route that the shuttle takes) and noticed that there were people standing around the trail where local cross country races take place. So I assumed they were having a race on the trail, but I noticed chalk arrows on the cement on the route I was running. Then I noticed a couple of other runners ahead of me and people standing at the corners wearing some type of volunteer t-shirts. I accidentally jumped into a race and were passing people ahead of me and having the volunteers cheer for me!!
Now this was only in the first half mile of my run, so I felt perfectly fine (not tired) as I was passing what looked like high school runners. Of course, I felt very bad about it and I wasn’t intentionally trying to pass them. So during this time I kept thinking to myself: “Can I get away with it? What if I’m where the front-runners are and I could medal? Would they notice if I have a bib or not or ask for my name after the finish?” Was this something that I could really do and not feel bad about it?
I literally came to a crossroads at one point in the run because I noticed volunteers pointing the runners to go straight, but the route for the Campus Loop that I originally planned to run was to turn right. And it was here where I knew that it was not right to go straight and just go back into my run. There was a part of me that was hoping that one of the volunteers would catch up to me and tell me that I was going the wrong way. But that never happened..
Back to the real run: I tried to run that loop about a month ago and didn’t think that I would run it well, so I did about half of the loop and just cut across the campus. This time, I kept thinking to myself that I knew I could do it, so I just kept running. The time was not my fastest (I used to run this when I went to school here and would go a lot faster). But this is a good starting point for me to improve upon the next time I run it. Hopefully I won’t crash into any other races next time, unless it’s one that I’m supposed to be running in.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:31 PM
too funny! glad you were honest about it – i think you’d feel bad at the finish, esp if you won. you couldn’t claim it as a win and still feel good about it. your time will come 🙂
April 29th, 2009 at 7:11 PM
Are we back to the journal? That’s a pretty surreal experience, and I wonder why people didn’t notice you lacked a running bib. You did the right thing.
As far as your earlier rant about news coverage, I can only say it’s far worse to be the one producing it: All you see is what’s wrong with humanity. After a while, it really gets to you.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:09 PM
@lindsay I think I was more amazed that something like that even happened to me. It was just so random!
@Anne Nope, this was a recent run 🙂 Probably back to the journal though, I don’t foresee any post-worthy runs in the near future. About the run, I think I’ve heard about people who would jump into races just to see what their times would be and race against others, which isn’t fair for people who paid their registration fees.
Totally agree, I should definitely be grateful that none of this bad stuff is happening to me.