How many races have you [i]won[/i] - 1st place

One, an 880. And it was one of the worst races of my life.

No tape, either. As a result, when I organized events in later years sometimes I'd put up finishing strings multiple times in the same race, just to give other "backbenchers" the feeling of breaking a tape.

2, but both low key "races" that I finished ~2 minutes slower than what I should have been capable of. I have been 2nd or 3rd in good races more times than I care to think about.

Bad Wigins wrote:

pewow wrote:

Those of us who have won races have just had the misfortune of running high school meets where 4:50 wins the mile.

Yes, I forgot there are little schools. I went to a big school where winning a dual required beating the 1:55 guy on my own team.

ok, so usually raced really good guys, even in dual meets? That explains why winning has been so rare for you (because for someone as cocky as you are, I was surprised you almost never won a race even in HS).

I had an older teammate that ran 4:10 1600 and 1:55 800. But I still won a ton in HS, because we usually wouldn't run the same events in dual meets. My conference was pretty solid, but still I won a lot. Winning a lot of dual meets in HS is not such a big deal for most people who were good runners. Look at flagpole. He was a decent runner in HS (not nearly as good as me certainly), and he won a ton. Am still surprised you didn't win many dual meets. In HS, in 3 years of indoor track, running everything from 300 to 2 mile, I won every dual meet and the conference meet (all teams) 3 times. I also won a couple state level meets (good state). About 30 wins indoor track. IF it weren't for my teammate who would beat me in X-C, I would have done about the same in X-C (win almost all my conference level meets, because I was almost always 2nd to him starting soph year)

DId you always face the 1:55 guy in dual meets? what other studs were you battling in dual meets and in other events (didn't you do the 400 or mile occasionally)?

Maybe 50 total, including a couple D-1 cross country and track races, many road races back in the day, bucnh of masters track, a few tapes broken.

The races I remember, two in particular... 21st place 1980 or 81 Cherry Blossom 10 mile...that right 21st place. 49:47 and I was 21st, mixing it up with Rodgers, Gregoric, Hatfield, handful of Kenyans and a stellar mid-Atlantic field. That race was like a dream, sub 5'es and a good finish.

The other was Milwaukee in 1983, 2:18 for 5th place in the Lite Beer Lakefront Marathon. Bad first half in 1:09:50ish and came back 1:08+, flying the last mile and picking up 5 or more places to qualify for OT.

As they say, its the effort...

4 HS XC races, including 2 state championships.

~25 HS track races, including 7 state championships. (we were a medium sized school)

3 College xc races including a conference championship (these were against mostly d2 competition)

7 college track races, including 1 conference championship (most of these were against d1 competition)

and countless road races

i chose d2 wrote:

4 HS XC races, including 2 state championships.

~25 HS track races, including 7 state championships. (we were a medium sized school)

3 College xc races including a conference championship (these were against mostly d2 competition)

7 college track races, including 1 conference championship (most of these were against d1 competition)

and countless road races

You won a grand total of 4 HS XC races and two were for state champs? Holy Christ your team must have been stacked.

Winning doesn't really mean much...times mean more in my opinion. I know that's not the popular opinion here, but look at John Sence...great runner from Ohio, finishes second to Kennedy a ton of times including at the Kinney (now Footlocker) CC championships. I sure would have loved to have been second as often as he was.

Also, there's a guy in my community who only won a race when his state champion teammate didn't run that race...he finished 2nd in the state 3 times to his teammate, so he was the second best runner in the state of Ohio and pretty much never won a race.

Winning a race is overrated. As I freshman I won a 3200 in 10:51 in my first 3200 ever, and second place was over 12 minutes. I was just at the indoor state track championships and watched the D1 girl run 10:31.

^ So your answer is zero?

erm like 10 high school races, 3 road race 10k's

a few. All my big races seem to be 2nd-5th places though, with an occasional 6-10. Does winning the slow heat in college count? Because then I'd have several more as my coach didn't lie about seed times like most coaches.

Probably about 20-30 when you include high school races and dinky local track meets.

I was once the first male in a road race when I was 18, but didn't win overall. I took the lead in the last mile of a 5 mile road race, and thought the race was in the bag, but one of my training partners (who had finished third at World Cross as a junior and had a PB under 32 mins for 10k) sat quietly behind me the whole race and outkicked me like I was standing still at the end. Not only did they combine the results for men and women on the same page, but she also ran 26:59 to my 27:01 so it looked like she beat me by over a minute when you looked at the results. It took me a few more years of training before I could beat her in a road race.

About 40 in state and district senior game races.

One local 5k where no real runners showed up.

Won a heat in the semifinals at USATF Masters Championships.

xfit_guy_the_real_l_one wrote:

I won the race to earn the most debilitating injury the fastest at my local 'box'.

Not really surprising.

1 bona fide win in a 1K at a low-level varsity meet. If you count heats that bumps the number to 5. If you count relays that bumps the number to maybe 7. I lived between two major cities so the competition was surprisingly stiff, but that's no excuse for not being good.

I've won about 10 races in my life. 1 HS xc race, a few 1600s and 3200s, 3-4 4x8s and 2 road races. In one of the two road races I've one, I didn't get to break the tape because some frat guy jumped onto the course about 100m in front of me about a quarter of a mile from the finish. The part that was kinda funny though was that I had the cop escort right next to me and he was dressed in a white undershirt, basketball shorts, and basketball shoes. The race organizers looked so confused for a second when they saw him and me right behind him. The jerk broke my tape though but I still got the official win.

If high school races count.... wild guess without putting too much thought into it would be ~80-100.

Lots of dual meets in CC and some invite and a slew of sectional wins.

track again a bunch of dual meets often 3x because of some combination of 4x8, 1600, 800, 3200, and 4x4. (hated the 3200)

senior year of track I had a breakout year and won a fair number of bigger invites @ 1600.

I used to run 4 or 5 road races per year as well and often as not I won them.

won a few heats and small meets in college but I was a mediocre college runner at best, although I loved the sport and loved competing.

Running: 1 overall, 1 1st Masters. Neither big races (no tape either one)

High school I only won high jump in track don't remember how many times, "winning" 440 (yes 440) intermediate hurdles in AAU I assume wouldn't count since it was age group heats and there were older kids that were faster. The 440 gives away how long it was ago.

Swimming in high school more than I can count (no tape there either) but most were dual/tri meets, but I did win both sectionals and state in two events one year.

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

DId you always face the 1:55 guy in dual meets? what other studs were you battling in dual meets and in other events (didn't you do the 400 or mile occasionally)?

The same dude could jog 4:24 for points. And we had a sub-9:20 guy in 3200. There was a 1:57 guy on my team too. We had a sub-8 relay but another school in our district had a faster one. Most of them had a 4:2x or 9:2x guy too.

That's what it's like competing in the high-enrollment division. Every school had 3000+ students and was well funded. Nobody won all their races, except on the girls' side there was a superstar every few years.

I went to a medium sized high school and D1 college in a major conference. I remember at the end of my senior year of high school I calculated how many points I scored in the whole outdoor track season: 276 pts. That is counting first place in a dual/tri meet as 6 pts and an invitational win as 10 pts.

I probably had close to 80 wins in my whole high school career (1 state championship). I think I had another 40 or so in college (3 conference championships). I don't do many road races, but I can think of 5 wins in local 5K's.

That puts me at about 135 total.