Many stories in this part of the website are just little acecdotes about single events, but The Ramble was much more, so much more. Long ago (12/16/03) in a place far far away (Chicago) a race was held by the name of The Chase Financial Rudolph Ramble. The four orgininals, Kindra, Barron, Luke, and myself (Griseta) decided to put in an 8k race before the Winter got too brutal and before all of our cardiovascular from cross country was gone. So we decided to run one of the year's few remaining races. Leading up to the race, w developed a scheme in which Luke could make a mockery out of this race, and of course, this sealed the deal that we would do this race. For the rest of us, we were prepared for a normal race.
So race day came, it was a Sunday in December and the first substantial snow had fallen the night before. Since the race was on running paths on the lake front, the pavement was not cleared and we soon realized that this path was going to be slippery for probably the whole race. On top of this, as soon as we got out of the car and arrived at the course, we were freezing, except for barron who was wearing this weird heavy jacket and these huge suede gloves. On top of this, we quickly learned, although we had pretty much figured this would be the case, that Barron did not plan on paying the $25 entry fee for the race. After Kindra and I signed up for the main race, and Luke paid the $8 for his race, we figured out a way for Barron to get a shirt and a bag. It was amazingly simple. By simply giving him my race number he was able to show it and get a goodie bag and a shirt (which featured a design of a reindeer in front of a colorful holiday scene...very gay).
In waiting around for the race, we couldn't help but notice the outrageous headgear that many of the other runners were wearing, a pair of foam antlers that you could put on your head. In the spirit of beiing obnoxious, we decided that it was vital that we obtain a pair of these and rock them for the race. After this, the race finally started and we were off.
For the first mile it was pretty packed up, but Barron and I ran together and Kindra jag bagged and went out in like an 8:00 for some reason. After the race had thinned out Barron and I were around 10th place and everybody else was within sight except for one guy who we later learned was a qualifier for the Olympic Trials in the marathon and was later quoted as calling this race "a waste of his time ". So Barron and I ran along for the next mile or so and eventually he started to fade. He later blamed this on way overdressing for the cold (i.e. - his huge, bulky jacket and thick suede gloves). So I went on and found myself in 6th place with a mile to go. I was prepared to take it in easy and put in a decent kick at the end, but I saw two people ahead of me that I thought I could reel in. I reeled in the first guy pretty easily and I was closing on the second guy when we came to a turn and I saw him slip on a patch of ice and go flying into the air head over heels.. Naturally, I took this as my chance to put a move on and I got even with him right as he had gotten up and composed himself. Probably shaken from his little tumble, he decided not to go with me when i put on a surge and I tried to go after the third place guy but by now there was only about a quarter to go and I couldnt reel him in. So I finished, and turned around and waited for the other ballers to finish. Barron came in almost immediately after me, so him and I waited for DK.
When I say waited, I mean waited for a long long time. We had both finished around 31:00 and by the time we had gotten a good place to watch from there was somewhere around 34:00 left. So we were like "Okay, it's Kindra so probably another minute or so."...nope. About a minute later, we some people bringing it in with their dogs. So by now, kindra had lost to two different species, but it would get worse. By now we were freezing becasue we had been waiting for 7 or 8 minutes...still no Kindra. After what seemed like forever, the clock hit 40:00 and still no Kindra. Now we were actually worried that Kindra had fallen victim to the slick course, or perhaps one of the dogs that had destroyed him had gotten a little to competitve and bit him, so we started walking the course backwards. Finally we saw Kindra in the distance and started yelling encouragement to him. As he entered the final straight away we were really cheering him on and we could actually see some effort coming from this kid; it looked like he was going to put the sting on a couple of a people...but somebody else had other ideas.
Probably from the cheering that we were giving Kindra, an elderly woman started to look around and see who her competition was that was garnering such encouragement. She looked back and saw Kindra, starting to bear down on her. Then came something I've never seen, she looked into Kindra's eyes and said "Oh no you don't" and put her head down and put on an astonishing kick. Kindra was no match for this unbelievable act of athleticism from the old granny, and despite his all out effort(and it was a solid kick, because i had been jag-baggin the first 4.75miles of the race.), the senior citizen opened up a huge gap on young DK in a mere 50 meters.
Kindra entered the chute full of shame and embarassed that a little old granny had just put the hammer down on him. He walked over to his astonished teammates, and there was nothing we could do but look at him and shake our heads. He had disgraced his family, his friends, his school, his team, the MGRC (even though it wasnt invented yet), his ancestors, his giant girlfriend, his future somehow very hot prom date, and many more people. But it was time to move on(my ass, i hear about the lady every day, to this day). After a short jew fest, where we got as much free stuff as we could and shoved it into our bags, it was time to watch Luke's race.
This race was no ordinary race, it was dubbed The Donner Dash, a series of kids' races that's age limit was 14, Luke's age at the time. We obviously took advantage of this and made sure he would make a mockery. After the shorter versions that consisted of little todlers running 100m and so on Luke's 1 mile race would go down. While watching these races, I told Luke the legend of the Downward Pump, and he vowed to reenact this historic mockeriacal (not a real word) gesture. When the race time came, it was clear within the first 150m of the race that this would be a coplete mockery. The course which was an out and back, 2 lap race was covered easily in around 2:30 by Luke for the first half. On his way to lapping the field, he busted out a downward pump, wearing socks on his hands, as he passed us. By half-way through his second lap, the guy riding the pace bike decided he should focus on the people who werent making a mockery out of the race, and let Luke stroll to the finish with ease. He finished in the low 5s and we congradulated him on his well executed mockery.
After another quick jew fest, we got our awards, headed out, hit up some Dunkin Donuts, and called it a day. Putting the cap on the race that planted the seeds to the MGRC, and to this day, remains the most ballin race of all time.