What is the biggest blow to your ego you've recieved in running?

There's a typo in it:

Should be 26 instead of 16.

I was running a ~5mile leg on a marathon relay team, when a guy blew by me wearing sandals and a toga. He was running the full marathon. I put in a surge to catch him, held on for 2miles, then got dropped again.

There was an article about him in the paper afterwards, I think he ended up running high 2:20s.

After having a few decent races at low-key meets as an unattached runner in college, I decided to jump into an 800m at a tri meet hosted by my school. My school was a bit of a mid-d powerhouse, so I knew I couldn't hang with their top guys, but the other two schools weren't as good, so I figured that they'd have a couple of ~2 minute guys I could run with.

As I stepped to the line, I realized that there were only 6 people in the race: me, my school's 4X800 team, and my school's star 1500 guy. My main memory from that race is being in last place by what seemed like about 30 meters as I ran my fastest first lap ever in 55 flat.

If I had ever entertained some crazy fantasy that I might some day be able to hang with national class runners, that 55 seconds of my life was enough to permanently bring me back to reality.

My first race ever I DNFed at Springbank. I somehow fantasized that I was in the same galaxy as Rodgers, Drayton, Nick Rose. Lesson learned.

I got out kicked by a girl in a road race 5k when I was 15. That hurt...

I realized I was a runner.

Got beat my 3 (yes, 3!) what looked like middle school aged girls a few years back in a 15k. Looked at the results after and they turned out to be 16-17 years old, so high school aged. But it still hurt. I averaged right at 6 minute miles and they beat me by a full minute so they must have belonged to a decent program.

European wrote:

There's a typo in it:

Should be 26 instead of 16.

To hell with you. 26 isn't that bad. You have to run 28 to be a Marine and they're the most bada$$ group in the world.

Running about as hard as I could for a 3 mile "tempo" run and having Meb pull up beside and start chatting like we were sitting having coffee. Not a nice man! (Kidding, he is an awesome guy).

*facepalm*

Yes, barely HS graduates are bad ass.

coming out of HS I ran 49s for the 400m in a very rural, white area so I had rarely faced real competition and usually won local meets easily

My first race of college track (D1) was an indoor 200m where I got smoked by a 10.2 100m guy who ran something around 21 flat, the other competitors in my 5 man heat ran 21.low-mid and I got DFL in 22.4 which was actually a good race for me. Some people are just too fast.

Not being mentioned in peoples rankings on Let's Run

Reading letsrun

I was running with my HS English teacher and I received this advice "I before E except after C."

One of the top HS cross teams in our state faced us in a dual meet; one of their guys was a scholarship runner at MSU or U of M.

Their top guys let our best guy take first and when they saw me approach them (I was the second best guy on our team), one guy said, "oh, let's speed up. And that was that." They took it like a tempo run. :(

Mt Washington hill climb. I'm a pretty good runner - top 1% even in big races...but by the end of that thing I was begging for it to end and praying middle aged women would stop passing me. It completely humiliated me,that race.

TAA wrote:

I got out kicked by a girl in a road race 5k when I was 15. That hurt...

Similar experience for me when I was 16 and starting to think I was hot stuff as a runner. A college girl outkicked me in the Cascade Runoff in Portland and I was devastated, must have been 1978. Her name was Joanie Benoit.

My first steeplechase. I thought I was pretty fit for my middle of the pack college self. Thought I had the technique down. And had NO idea what I was in for at first. Going over the 6th of 7 water jumps at a meet at Wake Forest, I got lapped by a dude from Michigan as I two-foot landed in about 2 feet of water. I never wanted to walk off the track more in my life.

Fufu wrote:

*facepalm*

Yes, barely HS graduates are bad ass.

Are you f***ing kidding me? A lot of guys who enlist are actually exceptionally intelligent. Have you taken the ASVAB? Also, I'll bet your miniature arms couldn't pull its body up three times.