Half-Marasprinters!

   A few weeks ago, after I'd finished running in the 5k event at the Springbank Road Races, I hung around and watched the finish of much of the half marathon.
   There was a reasonably steady stream of runners crossing the finish line and, for the most part, by the time they got there they were single runners, with occasionally two of them running fairly close together.
   A couple of times, however, runners found themselves more or less shoulder-to-shoulder in the last two to three hundred meters and a strange thing happened. They began to race each other! In a full-out sprint!
   So, I know you're thinking well, it was a race wasn't it?
   Of course it was a race and that was part of the fun of it, being timed and photographed and maybe getting some swag and perhaps collecting points but the very few times I've raced I've clearly still considered it a very individual kind of thing, comparing my race results more with what my own expectations might have been rather than how I fared running against other people.

A little bit of confusion going on?

   Now, I have no idea whether these half-marathoners-turned-sprinters knew each other or perhaps had had some earlier interaction during the race or whether it was just a little bit of competitive overdrive going on as they bolted down the stretch but it raised some interesting questions, at least in my mind.

   Was it appropriate? What I mean by this is was there any intent on the part of either of the runners to "show up" the other runner and pass him in front of the bulk of spectators? Or did one runner simply maintain his race pace, which then took him past the lead runner, who then felt compelled to respond? Was it just good-natured competition...?
   Should you pay any attention the runners around you? In my short-lived racing experience, I have yet to feel comfortable passing people. I know that it's inevitable that you will both pass and be passed during the course of a race but I still feel way too apologetic in my head whenever I'm the one doing the passing. Not that it happens all that often...
   If you have enough energy left at the end of a race to go into a full-out sprint, then have you been rationing it properly? Perhaps if either of those runners had used that extra energy a little earlier in the race, then there wouldn't have been that head-to-head finish at the end. I know for a fact that I could have sprinted at the end of my 5k but I chose not to because I was...well...tired. But the energy was there so why didn't I expend it during the race, or any of my training runs, for that matter?
   Was testosterone a factor? In both instances, it was guys sprinting at the end, which did not surprise me. But is this behaviour totally a "guy thing" or would you be just as likely to see two women battling it out at the end like that?

   I have always had a bit of a fantasy about coming to the last three or four hundred meters of a race, having maybe four or five runners ahead of me and then passing them, one by one, as I head into the finish line. I'm not exactly sure what fuels that particular fantasy (perhaps it's the drama) as I am not overly competitive by nature. So far, I've never been in that situation either--the finishes I've been involved in have all been where, as I got close to the finish line, the runners ahead of me were way ahead of me and basically out of reach. What I also find is that my fuel for fantasy has been all used up just getting to the damn finish line!


Have you ever found yourself involved in an all-out sprint against a fellow runner at the end of a distance race?