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?
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.