Thursday, June 18, 2009

F You Army 10 Miler

Last weekend, I decided to enter the Army 10 Miler for the 4th time in 8 years. Given that the race is not until OCTOBER, I naively assumed that perhaps they could squeeze me in among the 30,000 participants. Well, they must think I'm some kind of an ignorant douche bag. Race is closed. Just my fucking luck!

Let me give you a quick rundown of my experience with this shitty ass race:

2001: Registered in August and paid some obscene amount. I don't remember exactly, but I want to say it was somewhere around 70 bucks. Race was cancelled due to the 9/11 attacks. Just one more reason I'd like to punch Osama Bin Laden in the face. Regardless, I was never reimbursed, so the son of a bitch owes me money.

By the way, I would love to have a duel meet between TTWSS and Team Al Qaeda. After we anhilate their sorry asses on the track, they should be forced to lick Ryan's balls.

2002: I didn't feel like running that year. That's my bad.

2003: I registered and paid for the race, but got stuck in traffic and got to the expo five minutes late. I wasted a lot of money...again. FUCK! The race directors were assholes and wouldn't let me get my number.

The next day I bandited the race anyway. I ran (what would have been) a PR in 54:30, but of course, there's no record of that. Also the race officials yelled at me the whole time, but I just yelled back that my "race number fell off."

2004/2005: I don't remember much about these years. I was partying a lot, got smashed every night and had difficulty waking up in time for races. Can't really fault A-10 for that.

2006: Alright, I sobered up, got back running again and was all set to run Army 10 miler. I paid my 95 bucks and was psyched to finally race. I was checking my splits each mile and was doing steady 5:22s. At mile 9, I was feeling great and all ready to smash my PR with only one mile to go. I checked my watch at 5:00. Weird. I thought I should be seeing the finish by then. 5:30. Ok, I know I'm not running that slow, what the fuck is going on? 6:00. WHAT THE HELL??? 7:00. You've got to be kidding me. 8:00. This is bullshit! Well...you got the idea. They decided to change the race from 10 miles to 11.1 miles due to a suspicious looking package on the road (it was a kid's backpack). So, instead of running an all time PR, I once again, got screwed over by the Army 10. If I find that kid, I'm going to rip up his favorite Jonas Brothers poster and set his Wii on fire.

2009: Once again, no luck. I've noticed that even though they have 30,000 registered, based on past results, only about 18,000 actually finish. You're telling me they can't bump some rich, suburban soccer mom who's just going to walk the whole thing anyway? Can't they cut a few of those guys dressed up in clown suits and pimping balloons that look like fallice symbols? At the end of the day...can't someone just give me a fucking break???

9 comments:

RM said...

Pity, Party of 1, your table is ready.

Holy fucking shit I haven't heard that much whining since...well, Friday when a certain someone called me to whine.

Just stop doing the race, it's honestly not that good. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

There are other fast 10 milers out there. In fact there are plenty of other races in general that are a thousand times better than that one.

As it pertains to signing up for races, I never really feel bad for anyone because it was ultimately your lack of preparation. I have to fight tooth and nail to sign up for triathlons a year in advance, for the privilege to go to the hospital.

If a race just has shitty luck, like in 2006 (I remember that suspicious backpack, I miss that thing), it just is a bad break.

So don't worry about this race, just do something else. PDR. Baltimore Half. Any other race but this one!

Funnyrunner said...

bummer. I got in last year (I had posted on my calendar the first date you could register) but I couldn't run it - I had to leave for a business trip to Germany the next day. Good luck next year - it's supposed to be a great run, notwithstanding your bad luck with it....

KLIM said...

That was funny.

Steve said...

Hmm. You should get back at them by banditing the race in a clown suit!
Except for the shoes, though. I don't think you could PR in clown shoes.

RM said...

Joel seriously just do PDR with us. You know it's a better race.

Unknown said...

Ryan - I do plan on doing Philly Distance Run, and I actually do have some good luck with that one.

...But notice I was not bitching about signing up for a race and then running shitty. If that happens, oh well.

There are only two things I really expect in a race:
1. a complete, accurate course
2. a time and place in an official result of some kind
(Ok, that's actually 5 things)

I don't even need a race T-shirt. In fact, I wish more races were like S7, where if you want a shirt, you just pay extra for it. For people who just want to race a lot and not pay a buttload of money, I think that makes sense.

Regardless, I stand by my original statement that Army 10 sucks ass, at least for me.

Unknown said...

Yeah - it was 15 bucks extra.

Ben said...

thanks a lot bin laden!

Collin said...

Haha, wow, that is terrible. I remember hearing about 06 and just being like "WTF?". You should just bandit run again...