Friday night I ran in only my second 1-mile distance race, a length I'm not trained for or accustomed to. Fortunately, I felt no nerves or self-consciousness because literally, everyone else was in their underwear.
The race, the Tulsa Area Trail & Ultra Runners Undie Run, is in its inaugural running, but has some big local sponsors behind it (mostly just popular bars). Thematically, everyone was supposed to come and run in nothing but their underwear. Conceptually this would be great it if the quantity of clothing was negatively correlated with physical fitness. However, this relationship didn't always (or rarely) held true. Anyways, still a fun atmosphere. The hope is it will become a big annual event in the city, and after experiencing it myself, I share that aspiration.
The attire ranged from 'crowd pleasing' to 'grimace inducing'. Some girls wore thongs which showed a little more jiggling than would be desired, while some guys had speedos, but had anything but a swimmers physique. Others were more creative and funny; the best was a 50 year old man in Care Bears footy pajamas.
The event started at 7 P.M. in a cloudy, muggy, but rainless twilight. The temperature sat comfortably at about 72 - warm enough to provoke a nice sheen of sweat, but not too hot to cause overheating in the few minutes of maximal exertion required to race one mile. First, there was the 'fun run', or more descriptively, the 'slow, drunk, underwear parade'. This drew at all types, mostly because they handed out Jello-shots at the 1/4 and 3/4 mile marks.
I decided last minute to 'run' this 'race' just as part of my warm-up. I'd be running during that time anyway to get ready for the 'competitive' race later, so I figured why not do it with the masses. I took the first 1/3 of a mile easy, but as I had planned on doing in my normal warm-ups, I then picked up my pace a little to get my legs prepared for the full mile spring I'd have about 25 minutes later. It didn't take long before I realized I had jetted past the entire field and had come upon the 'leaders'. It was at this point that I realized there really is no pride in winning a fun run, and I didn't want to look like the narcissistic jerk going all out. You know that scene in Billy Madison where Billy dominates in dodge ball? That's what I wanted to avoid. So, I dialed it back and hung with one or two other guys at the front, and finished the race for a good warm-up.
The competitive race was at 7:30. The field shrank considerably since the fun run to only about 60 people. However, since a big chunk of even these folks were already drunk, there was an abnormally high proportion of DNFs for a 1 mile race. Some of these drunks also thought it'd be fun to start at the front of the pack (which is very poor etiquette if you don't already know), but got sufficiently elbowed and pushed early on that I think they learned their lesson. Anyways, after only about 400m, the field thinned at appropriately.
(8 hours later)
OK, so I took a break from writing this post, and now I don't even really care about the details of the race anymore. So I'll just wrap it up and said I finished in about 5:40, which was good for 4th. fun night.
-John
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