The best and ridiculous complements/remarks you recieved before and after a race

I had this huge rivarly with another girl in my state and region during hs. It was my junior year and I had beaten the senior runner every race. At the regional championships, she beat me and after i finished, i was walkling through the taped corridor after the line, and her father had the nerve to say "Not this time, (my last name)." Seriously... sick. Yeah well I got back - the newspaper wrote about the situation, I am sure embarassing the hell out of him. The girl also never one a state championship.. I stopped her last chance :)

Friends:

"We're looking to marry men with calves like yours."

"I saw you running with your husband and you were talking!"

Mom's advice:

"Don't run too hard, you might hurt yourself."

" I read that your uterus is going to fall out."

Dad's advice:

"You should just kick her ass."

"Pass her and rub it in."

16x wrote:

Friends:

"We're looking to marry men with calves like yours."

"I saw you running with your husband and you were talking!"

Mom's advice:

"Don't run too hard, you might hurt yourself."

" I read that your uterus is going to fall out."

Dad's advice:

"You should just kick her ass."

"Pass her and rub it in."

Message board admirer's advice:

"My, you ran such a great race, and your breasts are absoutely luciscious! May I congratulate them as well?"

luscious, sorry, got a little worked up there

I've never cared for the standard "good luck" before a race. I think the training should speak for itself.

i ran a local road race my senior year when i was in high school, and i was in damn good shape and had been running 15's in most of my xc races at the time. So i got up in the front of the group at the start line and this older guy grabbed me and said, "son, the slower runners are supposed to be in back of the group." well i was pissed and i shrugged him off, and after i took 3rd with a 15:25, the old guy came up to me and said, "you shouldn't cut the course, its not fair to the other runners." I have never been more mad in my life.

Ran a 10K race in Deming, New Mexico once (The Duck Race) and faltered badly in the last couple of miles enough to finish third.

At the post-race awards ceremony, medals were being distributed and the race director announced that a local jeweler had offered to make a personal inscription on the medal if anyone cared to visit the store afterward.

I wasn't in a very happy frame of mind to begin with, so I turned to my buddy and said, "Yeah, how about 'THIS RACE SUCKED?' That would be a nice inscription!"

There was a pause in the meet director's announcements, and I realized I had said things a little too audibly. Everyone was looking at me. It was kind of an awkward moment.

glt, Marty Liquori once said that in his competitive days people would wish him luck and extend their hand. Marty believed the hand shake was an attempt to steal some of his energy so he would leave them hanging and would usually give no reply or something along the lines of "It's not about luck," and walk away. You've got to admire such focus and confidence no matter how arrogant it comes across.

Before a small-time college XC invite, some middle-aged lady standing near the start line says to her husband, "So they just come out here and run?"

This is during a workout, but same idea:

Doing hill repeats at a small D-III school, an alum came back to train with us. He sucked then, and wasn't very good back in the day, but here he was to inspire us. On every damn repeat, he would yell out in a high pitched scream, "ARMS AND LEGS GUYS!!! ARMS AND LEGS!!"

And I had been trying to get up the hill with my neck and stomach....

And a great one from my coach:

I had just ran a horrible conference race my freshman year. Maybe the worst race I'd ever run. Anyway, I'm angry, sad, frustrated, and all the other feelings you get after a really bad race. What does my coach tell me to try to cheer me up...."Well, we get to go to Old Country Buffet now!" (to those who don't know this is one of those all you can eat buffets that have nothing good, and a lot of it) Later at the restaurant, I'm eating with another freshman buddy, and the coach comes around and says, "Well, what you guys need to do is run in the offseason!" We both look at him like he is an idiot. "It will really help" Needless to say, we had no contact with this coach (even when we tried to talk to him about next season) until the first day of cross next year. Luckily we were able to get a great coach for my senior year (about 3 years late)

I have many other great/horrible stories about this guy and his antics in practice and at meets. (driving a van in a ditch purposefully, running away from a team meeting because he was afraid of what we were going to tell him, quitting track coaching after 1 day because he thought he should be the head coach, not ever talking to us in the summer, and it goes on and on)

In college I had won a steeple in a low key mid week triangular meet at Kent State. The next day, one of my profs is kind enough to offer congratulations and the woman sitting next to me in class asks me what type of horse I rode. I told her that my horse only had three legs. I'm sure to this day she doesn't get it.

Night before a big away XC invite in college, our team goes to this italian place that has some dude singing while somebody is playing a piano. It was a pretty nice place. When we all get up to leave he sends up off with a "play hard tomorrow guys!"

My mom always fixed me pasta the night before every XC race in highschool to help me "carbo-load" and of course because I'd have "big track meet tomorrow."

We didn't have a good running store near us so she would order me 3 pairs of spikes and I would keep one and send the other 2 back. One year she decided to order me a 4th pair to try on. They were shot put shoes she found on the speciality page in Eastbay. And what I needed was a really special pair of shoes.

My ex-boyfriend thought it was the funniest thing to tell me I wasn't an athlete, i just "played" track.

When I graduated from college, some of my extended family asked me, "Now, you're done running, right?" as if I had finally gotten it out of my system and could become a normal person.

Then, just before I moved to CO, my grandma was concerned about me because she had read that people who overexert themselves at altitude can die of heart attacks. She validated her concerns (in her mind) by relating to me the story of how her aunt had traveled to CO 50 years ago and had suffered a stroke while there. Grandma will not come to CO now because of this, and she was truly very worried about me for a while!

A_Goofy_Runner wrote:

As far as coaches saying stupid stuff I used to have a coach who was notorious for it. In the middle of the race he would say stuff like "you have 3-5 minutes of running left" or "your parents came all the way down from (insert home state here), you better pick it up" and of course the legendary "use your spikes."

goofy- dont forget the legendary pre-race comment "you look like a goon from the dorms."

the pre-xc meeting comment "what are you doing here?"

the post workout comment "you should be ashamed of yourselves."

the post me-not-running-for-a-month-because-of-injury comment "can you run the 4x4 this weekend?"

the post-meet comment "hurry up and cool down so we can get back before the dining hall closes."

the post asking-fo-my-release comment "well, we probably won't have a guys team next year anyway."

and the standard monday comment "we're gonna have some [insert adjective] weather this week."

My college coach before a race....

"Don't worry about the pain just bring home the baby"

My college coach before a mile time trial...try to hit a 4:11 that is Ed's PR....right Ed? So Ed you pull everybody through.....we came through at 70 he was so pissed and yelled that's ok....make it the next three laps! We were laughing on the back stretch and saying to ourselves puh! What is he thinking. We all finished at 4:40! He threw another fit and said YOU SORRY GOOD FOR NOTHINGS in kinder words. We will try this again next week!

JasonInKunming wrote:

In 2002, I got outkicked by a little high school kid (I was happy for him, very tough little fellow) in a 10km in Japan. He was 1st, I was 2nd. I mis-timed my kick and was toast with 50 meters to go.

My girlfriend at the time went to the race with me and the first thing that comes outta her mouth is "YOU LOST."

That was the last day that she was my girlfriend.

Jason

Now I'm convinvced that Jason and Flagpole are one in the same. Flagpole, your post belongs under the heading biggest BS..."

kannapolis wrote:

goofy- dont forget the legendary pre-race comment "you look like a goon from the dorms."

the pre-xc meeting comment "what are you doing here?"

the post workout comment "you should be ashamed of yourselves."

the post me-not-running-for-a-month-because-of-injury comment "can you run the 4x4 this weekend?"

the post-meet comment "hurry up and cool down so we can get back before the dining hall closes."

the post asking-fo-my-release comment "well, we probably won't have a guys team next year anyway."

and the standard monday comment "we're gonna have some [insert adjective] weather this week."

I didn't want to pepper the board with all the "beef," but those are all good points. Let us not forget that the "goon from the dorms" was not just pre-race, remember he actually called me off the starting line, yelled at me in the infield capping his tirade by declaring I was a goon from the dorms, and then let me go back to the line.

Other mid-race quotes include "fast hands," "SPRINT (usually yelled with oh 12 laps to go in a 10k)," and "attack the stairs" (our time trial course actually had stairs in it). I shall conclude the exploration of his brilliance with the story of his secret formula. He used to have guys on the team run 2x200 all out with like 1 min recovery or something. Then using his secret formula he could predict what they could run in the 400. The formula was the two times added together + the difference in times. So if you ran 23.5 and 24.5 you could run a 400 in 49 at least according to the formula. When we pointed out that it was the same thing as doubling the slowest time he looked at us like we were idiots, exlaimed that it wasn't, and showed us his formula once again. Ah the good old days!

Ray wrote:

Now I'm convinvced that Jason and Flagpole are one in the same. Flagpole, your post belongs under the heading biggest BS..."

Ray,

Two things for you:

1) Jason and I are NOT the same person. He's much faster. I'm much more Christian and married and a better musician.

2) Sorry you don't believe the post of mine, but for whatever reason, the ladies have always been enamored with Ol' Flagpole Willy. Lots of crazies in California where that happened, and I WAS THE WINNER OF THE RACE after all. That's not even the most outrageous thing that has happened to me in that vein. I've been propositioned by all kinds of women at all stages of my life - including once by a 38-year-old woman who was house sitting for another woman I did work for while in high school - she came downstairs naked and asked me if I liked what I saw; I'll end that story there. I think other than the fact that I am strikingly handsome and talented in many ways (which the women see), I have a sense of "approachability" about me. I'm not a threatening specimen by any stretch, and when a woman is on the prowl for some action, she more then likely gravitates toward me - it is understandable.

So, if it makes you feel better about yourself to say my post is all made up, then ok, I'm fine with that; whatever you need to tell yourself.