Running Events: A Shared Experience

Running is selfish. The 'self' seeking strength and renewal, it’s the good kind of selfish, the kind needed to battle life’s challenges, to seize its rewards and to contribute to the evolving sphere of human existence, beyond the solitary self. When is running not an entirely ‘self-centered’ endeavor? When it's shared.

If you’ve hung around RhodyCo people, or noticed our web and print dialogues, you’ve noted our reference to ‘running events.’ We seldom talk about producing 'a run' or 'a race' or 'a walk'. We use those limited terms only if it’s what someone else in the conversation wants to use. A running event includes the run, the runners, the race and the racers, but it includes much more. It’s made up of walkers walking, volunteers serving public needs, workers earning a wage, entrepreneurs introducing the products of their dreams, corporate sponsors wanting to earn your trust and confidence, police performing their sworn ‘protect & serve’ duty, medics on alert, rangers guarding and proclaiming the beauty of our park lands, technicians artfully amplifying sound and artists using it, good green recyclers teaching by example and spectators bearing witness to a mass, public event.

Events become an expression of all that diverse energy. To say that running events resemble big parties would trivialize the sport, runners (& walkers) training, the extensive work by producers and volunteers and it would underplay the spontaneous energy needed to turn a gathering into a party. But, like a party, running events thrive with celebration or endure a grim undercurrent based on the energy that forms into a mood and flows through the crowd. What generates the mood? All the individual interactions and incidents, the behavior and attitude of everyone involved.

Weather can be a factor and whether the event is well organized or not matters, too. But, it's often the small acts that set the tone. Let me share some positive examples.

At the starting line of the 1991 Run To The Far Side® we had a very strong elite field of runners. We were giving away a car to the 10K’s first place man and woman. Jill Hunter of Great Britain lost her footing just after the start horn blew. She hit the pavement and was about to be trampled by the eleven thousand runners behind her, when two fast-thinking men forgot about their own race for a second. Each snagged an arm pulling her up and onto her feet. They saved her and her race. Hunter won a car, running the 10K in 32:11, one of the fastest female 10K times ever run in San Francisco.

 In the mid-1990’s when Emerald Across the Bay 12K was still known as ‘Houlihan’s to Houlihan’s’ one of our medics reported treating a sprained ankle at the course water station in the Presidio. Focused on treatment they didn’t catch the names of the two male runners who had carried the injured woman to the aid station. The medics did know the story. Two men, both observant and kind, saw a woman ahead of them misstep and fall. They headed straight toward her. Stopping a minute or two to confirm the fact that she could neither run nor walk, they then linked their arms into a hammock to transport her a quarter mile to the medic.

At the 2009 Glide Floss Bridge to Bridge finish line, two women who had just finished came to me, still catching their breath, asking me if the runner they saw limping near the six mile mark was OK or had received help. They even memorized the injured runners bib #. They waited while I check with medics and confirmed that the runner was treated for a minor injury but was fine.

Over the last twenty-seven years, we have seen so many altruistic and even heroic acts from runners at so many runs that we lose track of what good deed was done where. A runner who saw a coned covering a pothole kicked aside by fast, focused leader, stopped and stood in the pothole until he could find another runner who would retrieve the cone. When the charity at a small fundraising run under-ordered small and medium t-shirts, we witnessed the generosity of a whole group of runners each offering their shirts to someone smaller than them, ‘no, you go ahead, I can wear a medium’ or joking ‘you know what, I mostly wear them for pajamas, so the bigger the better.’ Runners in a porta-john line all agreeing that the guy in back dancing back and forth and moaning needed to cut to the front of the line. Runners helping find the misplaced sweats bag. Ride offers to a runner who had lost her car keys. A group of runners about to leave the finish area before they noticed an understaffed volunteer clean-up crew. They all jumped in, raking up cups, loading unused water and emptying recycling bins. Walkers, paid entrants, who have volunteered to walk the route with a trash reacher and a garbage bag, cleaning up the park as they go. Good people adding the best of human ingredients to the pool of human experience that events create.

As with most human gatherings, there can be a flipside to this gallantry. No matter the event or the cause, there are people having a bad day (perhaps a bad life), people who feel more entitled than the other five thousand people around them, people who are unobservant, spaced out or just ignorant of human courtesy. These are not my favorite memories from our running events, but they represent the other side.

A runner ducking under a caution-taped finish lane, when challenged about danger and discourtesy to other runners, replying “They’re so slow they shouldn’t even be called runners.” That incident is, unfortunately, not an exception in the category of runners being discourteous to other runners. Grabbing multiple bottles of water at the finish, even though thousands of runners have yet to cross the finish line, slower groups of runners lining up at the front of the start line and maintaining a clog in the first part of the course forcing faster runners to find a way around them, a runner making a sudden stop in the middle of a busy course to tie his shoes, disregarding the hazard he caused to the crowd behind him by not stepping aside. A man wearing his girlfriend's bib #, claiming 'I don't care about my time,' unaware that he might show up as a female age division winner, skewing all the women's results. Runners cutting in front of one another at course water stations or in toilet lines. I think we all know that these little, and not so little, incidents occur at running events here in the Bay Area and all across the country.

In the 'Running Commentary' section of the September 2011 issue of Runner’s World a Clydesdale runner talks about finishing a race and, after finding that the pasta sponsor had run out of its free samples, he spotted a runner carrying seven boxes of pasta to his car. "Wow, that's a lot of pasta," he said. The other runner's response, "Good thing I finished before all the fat runners so I could load up."

It’s not that we plan events thinking we’ll need help from heroes, but neither do we expect bad behavior. And, the extremes I’ve described on both sides of the event behavior scale are not the point but the exceptions that define the point. What experience do you want to have? The one in which runners are looking out for each other, or one’s in which it’s every man (or woman) for him/her self?

Events are a wonderful opportunity to connect with other human beings. Whether running it, walking it, working it, helping it be green or watching it, the event connects everyone. It’s a shared experience.

We live in a world where much of our interaction is impersonal, electronic communication or interactions in which we insulate ourselves (like driving and even mass transit, where, let's face it, we prefer not to interact). Protests are personal but the 'anti-whatever' theme isn't always positive. Concerts are a great example of positive mass gatherings. When thousands of fans come together to enjoy a performance by their favorite band, they have a strong, central connection, in that time and in that place, focused on that artist. Running events create an even stronger connection. Runners gather at starting lines en masse over and over again. Their connection is stronger than a crowd enjoying the same music because they're the ones on stage. They are the band, the performers, thousands committed to sharing the same rhythm on the same dance floor. The connection emanates through their lives, a shared element in their lifestyles, and they reconnect at every starting line.

Maybe we need a replacement term for 'running event.' Festival. Fair. Party. Celebration? I have to admit to a bias. For the 29th year in a row, Emerald Across the Bay 12K will be taglined, 'A Celebration of Running'. That was how I felt about 'running events' when I founded that run, my first, in 1984.

Please, before your next run, think to yourself, "Yeah, I'm going to a running celebration this weekend -- where I plan to both run and celebrate with my fellow runners."

Crowded together with other runners and walkers at a starting line, look around and remember, 'we're all in this together.' Who knows, you may find an opportunity to be a hero.