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

lost to backwards marathoner wrote:

20 years ago I went to Toledo to run my first marathon. I was quite proud of myself when I realized I would be able to finish without walking. At about 30 kilometers, a man went by me running backwards at an alarming pace. I was so intrigued and enraged at this that I held on to him until 40km. I couldn't keep with him through the end, and he managed to finish in 3 hours and 53 minutes, setting a new backwards marathon world record.

Words cannot describe how discouraging that was.

I don't think anything could be worse than that.

my senior year of HS I raced one of the fastest freshmen in the nation over 1600m and got outkicked for 2nd still running a PR of 4:18

my japanese roommate, a guy, decided to take up marathon running. lived the monk life, did the progressive workouts.

somewhere in the race as he's hitting the wall, a large portion of the old folks home come blazing past him, 50 year old women and such, runners know there are 50 year old women that can run 330 every day of the week.

this 22 year old healthy guy learned a lesson that day.

I false started in the Mile. Twice. Granted I was a freshman running his third high school race ever but that's pretty bad.

longjack wrote:you want to look deeper and see what this guy really did.

you don't get an aerobic engine out of the blue.

I think he was born that way. This sophomore told us he had no previous interest in sports. He simply showed up on the first day of cross-country practice and said he wanted to join the team. He was a skinny kid, around 5'6" and weighed about 110 lbs - didn't have a single well defined muscle on his body. He hated practice, would usually finish mid-pack on all our training runs. He had no speed, couldn't break 60 secs for the 440. He beat me, a senior, in every one of our cross-country dual meets, and beat me in the Conference meet. I think he finished 4th or 5th in our Class division meet (I was way back, had already given up at that point). He went on later in the spring, during track season, to break our school records for the 1 mile and 2 mile (several times each), and won both at the Conference championship. Strange thing about him: after his great Sophomore cross-country and track success, he never again competed in either sport during his Junior and Senior years - he simply lost interest. Had he persisted there's no telling what he might have accomplished.

Some of my running goals were to never get beat by a girl, never get beat by a high school kid when I was out of high school, and never get lapped. Of course, I knew that there were girls and high school kids (including high school girls) who could beat me, but they weren't typically in the same race as I was.

All of these things have happened, but none of them really bothered me. When I was beat by the woman and high school boys, I had run a bad race (I ran two minutes slower than usual for the 10k). When I got lapped it was because I was running easy, just trying to get a conference qualifier.

But the thing that bothered me the most was when I got beat by a guy wearing a full-body Captain America suit in a local 5k. I ran fairly well (17:28) and he ran something like 16:40. I am running the same race this year, so we'll see if the Captain shows up.

In Jim Ryun's return from retirement, a Mile indoor race in the Cow Palace in San Francisco, which was also his first race as a full-blown Born Again Christian, I was the last man pulled off the track in the Devil-Take-The-Hindmost Mile. I was coming back from a case of Mono only six weeks or so before and had no business racing, but I'd had a couple of decent workouts recently and thought I could handle it. Up against a bunch of junior college slugs, I still was the last one pulled off the track with a single lap to go. I actually quit Stanford's track team two days later, thinking I was through, but after a couple weeks I was feeling okay and resumed training. Nine weeks later I ran a 4:07.6, so there was a small redemption there. But I'll never forget the humiliation I felt that day in the Cow Palace. I couldn't face anybody. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

When I was in my early 50's, I got passed by someone pushing a baby jogger.

I can remember saying you gotta give up running when that happens. I went from a two-time winner of that same race to feeling like a looooser

I run with my kids in a baby stroller and I pass people everyday. I have run 1:10 with a baby stroller.

I own you.

bullshit: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/2000/fastest-half-marathon-pushing-a-pram-(male)

In high school fairly large meet, 800m race, I created a gap of probably 50m going into the final 200m from going out pretty hard. Got reeled in and burnt. Crowd went nuts, and his teammates were jumping around. I still have it on tape somewhere from when my parents filmed it. Good pacing lesson.

Not a real link...

If 1:10 is the record, I might go do it this weekend.

I was racing a 5km at Macquaid in HS... Me and my club teammate (Dif. Schools) we're leading the 3 mile race after the first mile.

I think we went through around 5:15 or so, I was feeling pretty good (I thought) until I heard a laugh behind me, but it wasn't from the crowd it was like 5-6 runners back. Turns out Matt Hughes decided to run the first mile like a tempo only to go on and set the course record.

Point is I was in 1st at 1 mile, only to be laughed at and then about 30 seconds behind 1st at 2 mile, and the progression continued.

I like how half these posts about a "blow to your ego" really boil down to: "One time I got second in a race but I still ran really fast". Wow. How embarrassing.

I've had too many to recall, but here are a few:

1). I used to be a fairly fast sprinter. I was a state finalist and ran for a DI school, and so on and so forth. I always dreaded the day that I got so old and out of shape that a girl beat me a sprint race. That happened a couple years go for the first time. I was running the 100m at a low-key all-comers meet where guys and girls were often in the same heats. A high school (or maybe college) girl was in my heat and she beat me handily. I'm sure she thought nothing about beating some old guy, but in mind it was like, "Oh God. I'm slow now."

2). A few years ago I joined a running club. I had told all these guys I used to be a college sprinter, told them my times, etc. These guys were all distance runners and none had ever run on a college team, to my knowledge. One day after a run we decided to have a little 400m race on the track, for fun. I did not win. Granted, I was a little older than these guys and I hadn't done any real sprint training in a long time. But it was still fairly embarrassing. I think the winner ran 53-something, and I ran 54/55. Then we decided to do a 200. I lost again, to a different guy. Officially washed up.

3). Shortly after college, I took up distance running and decided to train for my first 5k. I had never really been a distance runner, so running 25-30 mpw or so was a lot to me. I really thought I was doing some serious training. By this point, I even had a sub-5 mile to my credit, so I figured I was ready for a 5k. A buddy of mine who ran XC in high school agreed to run with me in my first 5k race. He hadn't trained in years. I hit the first mile in 5:30 or so and put a bit of distance between me and my friend. I was feeling good and figured he was toast. At around the 2 mile mark I hit the wall BIG time and slowed to a crawl. At about 2.5 miles or so he passed me and would go on to beat me by a good 30 seconds.

In my first marathon, I bonked pretty hard and was really hurting by mile 22. Around that time, some goofball passed me who was carrying a DSLR camera. He was running with great big bounding strides, stopping every so often to take a picture of something. Sometimes he'd run backwards for a bit, or kind of shuffle sideways while he was taking a photo. Unbelievably demoralizing. He beat the crap out of me in the race, too.

I started running my sophomore year of HS, and my team wasn't very good. I didn't break 20 in XC that year, but I still made top seven. Since we competed in a notoriously poor league for long distance runners, I finished in the top half of most races. Combined with the praise from my teammates, this led me to believe that I was hot shit. Anyway, indoor started, and one meet, I was running the 4x800. My coach had a tendency to overseed us beyond anything that could possibly be realistic, and therefore we were in the fastest section. I ran the leadoff leg, and after the first lap, the entire field had dropped me by 20 meters. I ended up running a then-PR of 2:19, and while one person got dropped from the pack and was only two or three seconds in front of me, everyone else ran well under 2:10. That was the first time that I gained even the smallest understanding of what being good actually meant.

Runner with a stroller wrote:

I run with my kids in a baby stroller and I pass people everyday. I have run 1:10 with a baby stroller.

I own you.

Came here to say this. I got beat by a guy in a 5k in Mentor, OH the other day pushing a stroller with his kids. I think he went around 18:30. Made me feel just super.

lost to backwards marathoner wrote:

20 years ago I went to Toledo to run my first marathon. I was quite proud of myself when I realized I would be able to finish without walking. At about 30 kilometers, a man went by me running backwards at an alarming pace. I was so intrigued and enraged at this that I held on to him until 40km. I couldn't keep with him through the end, and he managed to finish in 3 hours and 53 minutes, setting a new backwards marathon world record.

Words cannot describe how discouraging that was.

I got passed by a guy in the Columbus Marathon at mile 24 who was running backwards. His name: Tim Badyna, aka, "Backwards Bud." Undoubtedly the same guy.

Tim held 10k and marathon world records for running backwards, back in the day. He also ran 200 meters backwards in 32.78.

It really threw off my senses to have someone run by me backwards. He was fully decked out in Budweiser beer garb, and I felt like he should have been wearing a top hat and carrying a cane, too. Maybe tipping the hat and tapping the cane on the ground as he ran by.