Graduated last spring and have been working an office job since July. Every year on Halloween, my office holds a charity 5k. A lot of people dress in costumes for it and do it as a "fun run" and about 10 people run it pretty seriously. I've tried to maintain my training since graduating and would like to run a marathon in the spring, so I wanted to use this race as a barometer for my winter training expectations.
There's a guy at my office who is not Biggest Loser fat, but he's definitely carrying extra lard. He's approximately 5-8 and approximately 220 pounds. It's not a built/athletic 220 pounds either, he has a gut on him. He's maybe 32 years old. Anyway, he knew I was a runner and we had talked about running a few times over the last couple months. He said he ran a 9:30 2 mile in high school but didn't run competitively in college. When he asked me what my goal for the office 5k was, I told him I had no goal and was just using it to gauge my fitness. He said his goal was 18:30 and I almost laughed.
So anyway, at the race, he shows up in short shorts and a singlet with a gut that is hanging out from under the singlet. The gun went off and I was mixing it up in the front with this guy about 50 meters behind me. I looked back once or twice just to see if he was still hanging, and I was amazed at his endurance. I've never seen someone so fat look like an actual runner. I ended up losing the front runners and decided to just pack it in because I kind of needed to take a dump.
About 400 meters from the finish, I hear someone rumbling up behind me so I decided just to up my pace a little bit as to not get outkicked. I didn't want to get into an all-out sprint at the end just cuz I didn't want to look foolish trying to kick hard in an 18+ 5k. But to my surprise, the person who was coming up behind me was fatboy from the office. He passed me and I couldn't abide letting him beat me, so I engaged him in an all out kick. He buried me, putting 10 meters between us over the last 200 meters or so. He finished at 18:25. I was shocked.
After the race fatboy came up to me with a sh*t eating grin on his face and thanked me for pushing him to break 18:30. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I might have embellished my running accomplishments to this guy before, although I was a sub 16 5k runner in college. Now I have to deal with this guy in the office on Monday.
How could this fatboy be so good in a 5k? I know 18:25 is slow around here, but you guys would've all been amazed to see someone this slob-like run an 18:25 5k.