United
Community Hospital 5K Race - May 16, 2001
Since I am a very open minded guy and like to try new things, I occasionally run races. Actually, they are pretty fun. I started doing them with Heather because she’s big on running. They have 4 races that make up the Twilight Quad. and if you run all 4, you get a prize. It’s a good thing I don’t need to win any races to get prizes because I’d be screwed. I get beat by pretty much everyone. I think it’s due to my lack of exercise and no training. At least I try. Anyways, I’m just going to write about some of stuff that happened during my race last night.
The first thing that struck me as odd was the lack of traffic control. They didn’t seem to block off the road or anything. People were trying to get through and the roads were covered with about 200 runners. It was especially funny at the start of the race when everyone was crowded together. Normally, the police come and block off the street, or at least they did in the last two races I was at. Some lady drove through and was beeping her horn, and then she flipped every one off when she drove by us. Some semis also tried to go through and had a heck of a time. After this though, the race started.
Along the race route there were a number of “spectators.” These were people who sat outside their house and watched us run by. One guy had this dog that was barking at all the runners. One runner ran up into the yard right next to the dog for some reason. The dog was quite pissed off and tried to get him - too bad he was on a leash. Then there were some kids sitting at the end of a road eating gummi worms. For some reason I wanted to punch the one kid in the head because he annoyed me. I really don’t know why; that is so terrible. Finally, there was the guy sitting on a chair with his feet propped up on another chair. He was just sitting there drinking beer and having a great old time. Nothing is better than country hicks.
The worst thing by far with this race was the running family. Their last name is Christensen. I don’t know if that’s spelled right or not. They were so freaky. There were about 6 or 7 of them. Before the race they all ran back and forth through the parking lot. Now this would not be weird normally, but they all had exactly the same stride. It was the 2 parents and like 5 kids. The male kids all had sweatpants on, and they were pulled up about halfway up the stomach. They had their running shirts tucked in under the sweatpants. They reminded me of Urkel from Family Matters. They won about 9 places in the normal race. The 7 year old girl destroyed me. She got about half my time. In one division, they got the first 3 places. I seriously think they live for running. I think the children don’t get any food if they don’t win the races. After the race, they were again running back and forth in the parking lot with the same exact stride for all of them. It was so freaky. Some people just shouldn’t have kids.
Besides the racing family, there were some other interesting racers. There was this foreign guy who got 4th. He was saying afterwards that he should have ran slower so that he would have gotten 1st in the masters division instead of 4th overall. He must have said this 10 times... Quite annoying. Then there was this guy behind us who was breathing horribly. He was kind of like wheezing. I know you can’t do much about this, but he didn’t sound like he should be running in a race. All in all though, it was an interesting time. I’ll write some more if anything happens at all the other races I go to. I’m sure there will be.