Run to Win

A few months ago, my wife ran in a trail race where a woman fell and dislocated her finger. She had to be driven to the hospital while the race director filled out an insurance form for the park with the information on her registration.

Thankfully, she was okay in the end, but had she hit her head than there could have been a very real possibility that nobody would have known who she was had she not been a part of the race. Many runners are not in the habit of carrying identification when they run.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article about race bandits and offered up a general opinion about why you should never bandit a race. This evening, Tom came by and left a comment, which read as follows:
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• This week last year, I wrote a bit about nutrition. First, I reviewed a few nutrition books, and I also discussed a study that found that our brains ignore calories from beverages. That makes it easier for us to eat more than we should when we drink juice or soda.
• Another study found that children who do not get enough sleep tend to be overweight. The study did not determine why that is so, but it did seem to point out a direct correlation. I think that sleep is very important, being one of the best times to allow your body to rest and recover from a workout.
• This week last year, I explained why there is always a headwind when you are running.
• Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab, and Kevin Lin ran 4000 miles across the Sahara Desert to raise money for H2O Africa. That is quite a feat.
• This week two years ago, I described how to do chinups, suggested that you always eat breakfast, and reported on a story about a deer that bandited the Austin Freescale Marathon. The guy that got tackled by the deer didn’t run again last year.

I do not hold with banditing races and I never have. A bandit in a race is any person that runs the course and makes use of the race support but has not paid for the right to be there. Jon over at the complete running network wrote about how he no longer holds with banditing a race:

When they were these mysterious, unseen runners, it never made a difference. But now, seeing their faces, and them running between the real racers, it made me mad. [...] They didn’t pay their money like I did, and now they are spoiling my race. [...] It’s theft, plain and simple.

Actually, to my mind, banditing a race is not plain and simple.
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The Austin Freescale Marathon was on Sunday. The gun went off, the crowd began the race, and a freaked out deer tried to bandit the race.

The deer, apparently disoriented, leaped over a pack of runners in the Freescale Austin Marathon on Sunday and hit Tillinghast’s left side when he was about 200 yards from the starting line. The impact of 90 pounds of venison brought him to his knees and he and the deer went down together. A few seconds later both recovered enough to leave the scene, the deer heading into the woods and Tillinghast resuming the race.

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