Here’s mine:
I don’t think I had ever run that fast before in my life. It was Christmastime and all the runners were given jingle bells. At the time, I was still a beginner and I was used to stopping frequently throughout my runs. So I’m jogging, lots of people passing me, I’m also passing others. It’s pretty cool. Then a kid passes me. Then another. And some more.
That’s cool too, I expected that. There are bound to be elementary school children faster than I am. What I didn’t anticipate was how many would keep pace with me.
I was tired and wanted to stop running. Then I looked down to find myself adrift in a sea of babies. I remember kids falling during laps in my formative years. Stampedes! Pile-ups! Only disaster could follow my stopping. They’d trample me, they’d trip, and we’d all fall down. Other races would have to avoid a tumbleweed made of a 4th grade classroom and what they assumed was the teacher, all going jingle-jingle-jingle. I dare not trust the coordination of myself and these cookie-fueled chaos factories. I had to keep running!
Anyway, eventually they split away from me and the rest of the race is a blurry lung-burn-y memory. I got a cookie and a finisher though.
So, what’s your 1st race story?
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My first half marathon was in Taipei. The full lenght of the race was on highways, and it was drizzling a bit. I saw a racer wore flip-flops, and later saw another one too!
The most memorable part was…I had to pee, it was around in between 10 to 15K. There were porta potties along the way, and I went to the closest one I could get to. So I jog across the empty highway, opened the door, and was welcomed by the horrid smell of human excrement. The floor was completely covered by the yellowish waste, but I had no other choice. I stepped in and relieved myself, while imagined how bad this guy must have felt.
Anyway, I ran a decent pace, then walk funny the days after.
I used to run at school where track was compulsory, and I’ve been a causal runner for fitness most of my life but never entered any races. About 15 years ago a work colleague who was trying to lose weight asked my if I’d like to sign up for a 5Km. I agreed, and the day arrived. I beat him easily. Next was a 10Km - again I won. A half marathon came next and I still triumphed, but only just. Finally we decided to run a marathon and he walked all over me. I never realized how much training you need to put in to be able to run 42.2 Km. Anyway since then I’ve been hooked. Coming up on my 10th marathon this year - MCM in Washington DC and hoping to qualify for Boston.
I’m not very coordinated and my eyesight sucks so ball sports are out. Running is something that almost anyone can do - no fancy equipment or playing fields required - and the feeling at the end of a race, when you’ve trained hard and you cross the finish line, exhausted but still strong is like nothing else on earth.
Technically my first race was a Turkey Trot with my sister who I think was training for a marathon. Second race was a Memorial Day 5k this year. I ran it as a training run until I got near the end and I realized there was someone in my age group pushing a double stroller right behind me so I knew I couldn’t let him pass me right at the end. That would be embarrassing.
There was also like a five year old girl who had been ahead of me the whole race so I had to keep up my pace once I saw her slow down with like a quarter mile left…couldn’t handle that potential embarrassment either lol
And then right at the very end I saw someone in my age group just ahead of me so right when I felt like I couldn’t keep up my pace any longer, I was forced to speed up to pass him.
The race was cut short because a business along the route had caught fire that morning so it ended up being pretty much 4k on the nose, maybe 25m short. I finished in 21:35 so I wasn’t particularly fast but I was proud of myself for having the will to keep going at the end. Got second in my age group (…excluding the overall event winner…) so I got this really tiny dog tag with a label maker label on it as my trophy. I thought it was really funny and fitting for my middling performance in a small, local “race.”
My first race where I’m going to actually try to do well will be a trail run Saturday morning through a mountain bike park going over some of the bike obstacles so it looks like it should be quite fun.
I think my first was just after finish C25k, a small 4k or 6k organised by the local running club. The organisation was pretty much two people taking registrations from a trailer and a guy with a stop watch and the participants were mostly running club members from the area.
Obviously I was the slowest by far.
The second was also fun, a short triathlon for the XLP Research Trust charity. The run was 8k and I totally wasn’t prepared for that. But it was fun and we all raised money for the cause! Not some far away cause either, the event was organised by the trust founder who I knew personally and whose 4 sons were diagnosed with XLP.
Did a Mother’s Day 10k, it was awesome and the weather was beautiful. I quickly learned the 50+ year olds were no joke in a 10k or at least in this one.
It was a little weird that I was just a dude running a 10k for Mother’s Day but I got a bib number relevant to my Mom so it was kind of cool and she liked it.
I think I probably ran consistently for at least 3 years before signing up for a race ever occured to me, haha. I think I eventually signed up for a Thanksgiving 10k, and while I was very comfortable with the distance, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in terms of race day logistics. I was home from college at the time and I had forgotten my running shorts so I ended up running in my brother’s sweatpants which were A) pants and B) much too large for me. Additionally, I had not put together that I wouldn’t have a place to store anything and had brought a drawstring bag with me from the car so I ran the whole race with that bouncing around behind me, pants billowing in the wind 😂
I prepped for my first race with c25k while taking my dog with. Started with muy dog always running faster, and ended with me pulling the dog by the last week. Pulling him meant we always went his pace, so my training runs were 35 min 5k’s at fastest. I felt like I might be able to go a bit faster, but wasn’t sure.
I got to the race, and it was a small race with about 250-300 people, but it felt huge to me. I got into the spot for an 11 minute mile pace, feeling pretty good. We started out, and it was a weird feeling that everyone was out there running, almost as fast as I was. I needed to pass a few people immediately though, which was also weird because I didn’t expect people to literally walk.
Maybe 2 people passed me the entire race. I passed maybe 30 people, it felt like so many. I started at 11 minute mile pace, and hit negative splits for every mile. I had to pass so many people. It felt like I was constantly weaving through people.
I felt great until the last half mile, where the final hill made me feel like I would die, but I made myself push through it. Finished at 29:59, a huge PR and a victory. I was so proud of that. I’ve run plenty faster since then, but that was still the best I’ve felt after a race.
In grade school I was out the day they did the mile run, so the next gym class, I had to run a mile while the rest of the class watched me. It was humiliating. I finished struggling terribly in 12:50. So in this race, I completed 2 miles longer with each mile well faster than my younger self. It felt like a redemption, only 20 some years later.
The line for the post-race cake pops was forever long, so we just left without them. It was mother’s day and we had a brunch later that day. As an aside, my favorite race was the same one the following year. I finished in 55 minutes walking with my mom.
