Funniest thing you have seen at a race

America East xc champs this year on of my team mates pushed some freshman from Binghampton while going around a tight corner. The Kid replied with a very loud "F Off!" A few metres later, just to test him, my mate pushed him again to which the kid shouted out "Do you think you're a funny guy do you?" My mate replied with a "Yes" and gave him a final push off the course.

On Thanksgiving in a 10K I didn't have time to wait in the long line for a port o potty. I thought I could survive 6 miles. At mile 3 I knew I was in trouble. I began to pick it up and was side to side with this guy just hoping the sensation would go away. It got worse. I was cursing under my breath and pretty upset because I had started to feel good with increasing the pace.

After passing an intersection with people cheering I dashed off the course into the closest bushes (near the sidewalk on someone's side lawn). To my dismay I had already messed up my pants.. I left a big pile and cleaned up with leaves . I ripped my underwear off and threw them near by. ! I feel bad if anyone saw this or had to clean up the mess.

I split the bathroom stop - 75 seconds before I went back to get in the race. I got back in where there was a big pack of guys looking at me. And I said something stupid like "I just lost over a minute because I had to go". Then I did a snot rocket and realized I had sh** on my gloves.

I finished my last 2 miles faster than the first 4 but got beat by 30 secs by a late 40 year old to miss out on $100.

Next time I want to protest these races that don't give you enough bathrooms by taking a crap by the check in.

Woman standing to pee, out in the open, before the start of the Catalina Marathon in California--a tough trail run with 4,300 feet of elevation gain and loss.

The tradition, a long one, was that women used the left side of the start for peeing, the guys used the right side, with both sides of the start being hilly which limited unwanted exposures.

Lots of people peeing, both men and women, tons of people hurling near the finish of an unseasonably warm thanksgiving day race...but the tops was a fat guy sprinting for the line in front of a guy in a gorilla suit. The fat guy was exhausted and stumbles over, the gorilla guy's momentum carried him right into the fat guy and he levels him...bad. They are all tangled up and the fat guy was bleeding, the gorilla just got up and walked off.

Not exactly a funny moment but my girlfriend ran a 5k that went over part of a golf course once. Some guy going to golf had a massive heart attack and died in his car right in the middle of the race course. The front runners ran past him but some people from the pack stopped and tried to saved him.

An illusion at the very end of my first marathon. It was my first one and was unprepared.

I really hit the wall at 22 miles. My girlfriend ran that last 10k with me and said I had become delirious. I was glad she was there and encouraged me to keep going.

At I made the last turn I was glad to see the finish line a few hundred yards away. My gf had to leave me right at that point. I decided I would stop running---shuffling was more like it---as soon as I got close to the end.

As I got close to the end and picked my point to start walking---about 20 feet before the end---the crowd started cheering really loud. I didn't know why. They couldn't be cheering so loudly for me.

Just as I stopped to walk I was passed by a guy in full-on, Bozo style, clown suit. I was his last victim as he sprinted to the end. The guy even had booze shoe covers glued to his running shoes---a real big foot.

I asked by gf is a clown was in the run and she said she never saw a clown. We decided that mentally I lost it and just imagined the clown guy passing me.

The next day the local paper, on the front page of the sports section, wrote about the marathon. The main picture the paper used was of the clown guy finishing the event and I was in the picture. The clown was really there, he had run for a kid's charity. Even though I got lazy and walk the last few steps, and got overtaken by a clown, I made on the front page of the sports section. Lucky me, I think.

OldXCguy wrote:

some of u know who i am wrote:

I crapped in my pants and still won state.

Wait, so you dug up a thread that was three years old to tell us this?

that, and to bump it for everyone.

Great thread, thanks for the bump. Mine aren't lol funny so much as sad funny but here goes.

Relay for my high school dropped the baton twice in a DMR: first time our 1200 guy got bumped/tripped and the baton got loose, 2nd time the 400 guy took off early trying to make up some of the lost time.

Guy on my xc team lost about 50 places in the last half mile of a 200-person xc race. Just straight bombed, was barely running, and was on pace for sub 26 prior to that.

In terms of eating before a race, I have known/seen people who bombed because of not eating anything or had ridiculous blood sugar from OD-ing on powergels.

I also know a kid who sh*t himself in a race, seems like everyone does though considering the number of runner friends each of you pants-crappers must have (maybe not after said incidents though).

Sophmore year when I was running like 20 minute 5ks I got to the bottom of a hill and some kid walked off to the side, put his arms on his head and bent over and started doing this weird stretch, he wasn't even breathing hard or anything.

High school XC meet. We had this guy on our team who was - shall we say - not very competitive. He was warming up before the JV meet still with his jeans on over his uniform.

The gun was about 2 minutes away when this guy comes up and he is struggling to get his jeans off. The lining in his shorts had become tangled in the zipper of his jeans and so every time he tried to take off the jeans the shorts came down too.

Our coach took over amd was basically digging around in this guys crotch trying to untangle the zipper. All the while the guy was apologizing profusely and insisting that he could run the race with his jeans on. He finally got them off about 20 seconds after the gun when off and he ran the race. Great HS memory...

About 400 meters into a h.s. xc race my friend and another guy, both of whom were at the front of the pack, started singing and signaling the YMCA song. They got through arm waving of YMCA two or three times before stopping and taking the race seriously. I was a little annoyed because I couldn't beat them, but it was funny.

Also in high school I was in a post-state xc race on a course with a bit of snow on it. We take off and some guy ahead of me yells "I'm freezing my balls off". Everyone laughed, and it definitely made the race more fun.

I was in a distance runner's 4x4 at the end of a dual meet. I was the 2nd leg, handing off to a kid who had never been in a relay race before. He was really nervous at the start, but we got him to relax and thought he would be fine. As I am coming down the home stretch, I see him jumping up and down waiting for me to hand off. While he was jumping, he was gradually moving further and further to the left of the lane, to the point where while I was about to hand off to him, he was off the track. I saw what was about to happen and wanted to say something, but I was completely out of breath from running a 400. He took two steps as fast as he could and ran headfirst into the scorer's table. Nearly took out the two officials who were sitting at it. He turned out to be ok, but we never let him run a relay race again.

My two teammates and I (one male and one female) went for an easy 5 miler one winter. She was a lot slower and would always run by herself, but she liked to start and finish the run with us. It was really foggy that day, and I live in a farming community.

Well, we got out of sight from her, because of the fog, and then hid in the bushes. She knew we were messing with her, so she started looking for us. She stood three feet from us, yelling at us that it wasn't funny, without realizing we were there. Then she ran 400 meters along a dirt road, turned around and stopped by us again. After she left the second time, we laughed. A couple minutes later, we heard a distant yell. Finally, she turned around and ran back towards home. We then ran after her and asked where she'd been. She said she knew we were hiding she yelled for us. We told her that we just ran straight, but when we heard her yell, we turned around and ran after her.

We then messed with her a little more, played war as we ran through ditches, and then went home and ate pizza. It was immature, but really funny.

I am nearly 6 years removed from high school and 10 years from this story, but high school stories are the funniest because everyone is so young and awkward.

My story is from my freshman year of high school. It was a quad meet and we were all lined up ready for the race to start. The head coach of the host team who was like 70 years old at the time, and still coaches there now, was explaining the course to make sure we all knew where to go. He noted that at the tree 300m ahead we take a right at the pylon. A senior on my team--who was our best runner at the time even though he was a 110 hurdler and 300m hurdler, who would later that year in states in the 110s--asked what a pylon is. He was not being sarcastic and said it honestly. To be honest I was wondering the same question. The coach flipped shit while we were all on the line looking at him: "I've been coaching for 50 years! What the f*** is a pylon?! That's a f*****' pylon (pointing at pylon)! I'm sick of this s***! (Shoots gun to start race). Haha. There was like a 3 second delay before anyone started running because we were all in shock.

Back in High school we ran an invitational track meet with some of the best 4A and 5A schools in the area although I could not say the same about the announcer chosen for the race.

Before the 4*4 race the announcer decides to explain to the unknowing crowd just what type of strategy is used by coaches to win the 4*4.

\"Next up is the four by four an extremely fast race. Out there you will see some coaches put their fastest runner first, other coaches will put their fastest runners last, while some other coaches will even put their fastest runners in 2nd or 3rd!\"

My coach then replies to this \"Wow! I never thought of that! That just might work!\"

I think it was the same race the 3 other guys in my 4*8 team (we ran XC we couldn’t care less about track) we decided to get an edge up on our competition by turning our baton hand off practice into a baton toss. We were failing at first until my team mate threw the baton after I took off and I made a perfect catch the NFL would be proud of. Our parent section in the stands began to cheer our accomplishment to which our coach got up from the stands and said \"Well I guess its time to get down there!\"

Remember the 'fanny pack' thread?

I was running our Thanksgiving Day race. Not far from the start, I pass these two guys (both fairly large with full fanny packs) and one yells over to the other, "Hey! pass me another one of those gels."

While running the Hood to Coast Relay our van was driving up a gravel road in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. We see at the side of the road an "Oasis" We thought we were dreaming, but stopped and went over to it. It was a Trailer that Red Bull had set up with a full bar. It had fake palm trees and the works. The girl there was drunk as a skunk. She said to help ourselves with whaterve we wanted. We took a few cans of Red Bull and a couple of beers for later. We would have stayed longer, but our runner that was running that leg came by and we had to leave. It was a sureal experence. xc

Not quite at a race, but a kid I know just ran 85 seconds for a 500m race (yes a male) to place dead last. A couple weeks later he got wings tattooed on his ankles...

not from around here wrote:

America East xc champs this year on of my team mates pushed some freshman from Binghampton while going around a tight corner. The Kid replied with a very loud "F Off!" A few metres later, just to test him, my mate pushed him again to which the kid shouted out "Do you think you're a funny guy do you?" My mate replied with a "Yes" and gave him a final push off the course.

Jebus. Hard to know who the bigger a$$hole is--your "mate" for fouling the kid, or you for thinking that it was funny instead of a sh!theaded thing to do.

Oh, and by the way, it's "Binghamton," numbnuts.

In High School, my team was at a large track relay/invitational in California. At the end of the meet, there was a series of 4x400 races, with each heat gradually getting faster and faster. In the penultimate race, there was a school from Carson racing another school. They were neck and neck the whole race, and the the other school pulled ahead and won at the end.

My buddy and I were sitting in the bleachers right next to the school from Carson when we heard one girl turn to another and say:

"Man, that's our Frosh-Soph team!." --Aisha

"It's aight Aisha, they don't know ... they don't know..." -Girl 2, while shaking her head and doing a slow clap.

My friend and I about died of laughter.

I should note that Carson went on to win the 'A' heat by a convincing margin.