Repost from another forum. (This site is randomly inaccessible to me now).
So, I went to a track meet last week. I had some teachers that tried to get us to participate for some odd reason. I figured alright, why not. I'll be a good sport about it. I'll just run some short race or something, it won't be too strenuous. After all, I don't tend to get much exercise anyways. A bunch of classmates all had the same idea. So, I signed up for the 100 meter sprint, and a 400 meter relay race. (Kinda had to bug a few people to get the 4 people needed). After all, how bad can this be? I mean I've been to a few highschool track meets and all. A bunch of students all either talked into or forced into participating. Most of them don't really care too compete so it's usually not too hard to do half decent. Right?
I couldn't have been more wrong. The next day we were wisked off to the north campus (very large) and we found ourselves being paraded through an olympic sized stadium in front of about 7500 to 10000 people, according to the best guesses of my classmates. And there we were in the middle of it walking along the track in a sort of half blob (everyone else was marching in a perfect column) and waving little flags on chopsticks for flag poles.
Now, the crowd aside, the competition was killer. There wasn't anyone else forced into participating with no real interesting in athletics. No, these were your bulging muscle, well toned athletes who had been training for this event for months. Let me tell you right now, we didn't win a single race. In fact, by the end of the day when it came time for the relay race, we had no expectation of anything better than dead last. And I don't mean a close finish either.
And yeah, it'd have been nice to be told in advance just how big of an event this was. No, the teachers who talked us into it just decided to let us find out first hand. After the parade, they fired a few shots from a cannon (blanks) and had someone run in with one of those torches like in the olympics. It wasn't until they turned off the track and ran up into the stands that I first noticed the big torch built into the stadium over one of the entrances. A quick turn to address the crowd, and they lit the torch. Then after some more excitement from the crowd, I turned to see the 200 or so pigeons that had been released and were flying over us. My first thought here was, I hope they don't crap on me. After a few teasing passes they left and my shirt was still clean. My fears were not unfounded though as some girl nearby got a load right on the front of her shirt.
The shows in the midfield were pretty cool. They had some taijiquan stuff going on there. They used some real swords in the first dance too. I saw them up close afterwards. Definately real metal. The aniversary celebrations I went to earlier used fake weapons. Kinda interesting how they carried the swords through the crowds. They'd leaft the sheaths back where they were sitting, so the blades were still bare. Oh, and the really cool one was the group that broke out into a brake dance. Started off slow and traditional until suddenly the music changed and they all kinda tore their clothing open to reveal the much more modern look underneath. I'll have to upload of pic of that sometime. That's one of the few ones I have from the event. I didn't think to take a camera that day, but I got some pics from one of my teachers.
Unfortunately for me, I had the first race of the day, the sprint. I had yet to fully realize just how hopeless it was for me until after the race was over. (Ok, by about the first 20 meters I had realized). At any rate the loss felt most embarassing. I saw a picture of me running afterwards and I noticed the lack of other runners in the picture. They were too far ahead to be caught on camera. Probably already across the finish line.
Shortly after that came the 5000 meter race. But, I had two classmates in this race, so not only were we able to claim last place, but second last as well! =)
Anyways, skipping ahead to the relay race....
One classmate we'd talked into participating backed out on us at the last moment, (like minutes before the race), so we got some substitute runner. They were to run second and I was to run third. (Four runners total). I kinda felt sorry for them since they were the only one who knew what they were doing. Seemed almost like punishment to make them run on our team. And I use the word "team" lightly here.
So we were all lead to our starting positions on the track. It wasn't until then that I began to wonder if I'd even recognize the person when they came to hand me the baton. I kinda wished I'd paid more attention to what they looked like when we were quickly introduced. It didn't matter though. Our first runner was so slow, it was pretty clear who was gonna hand me a baton, because I was the only one left. In hind sight though, it wasn't the face I should have memorized, but their instructions on how to properly pass the baton. I did about the sloppiest job ever. They had run clear past me before I could manage to grab it from them and had to catch up and run after them to get it. It looked pretty ridiculous. Like I was so worried about grabbing the baton that I forgot to run.
Anyways, it was the next part that proved to be the moment of gold. I ran around the corner of the track to pass the baton off to the fourth person... only to realize there was no fourth person there to pass it to. I kinda slowed to a jog looking around at the people on the track, but the only person left was some person who'd just finish their run around the corner of the track. After a desperate glance to see if they'd try to take the baton from me and run off with it to the finish, I quickly realized it was hopeless and stopped dead on the track.
So there I was in a stadium with thousands of people watching, stopped dead on the track in the middle of a relay race, and I just stood there kinda turning around looking for someone, anyone, to take the baton and run. After a few moments someone shouted "the finish line is that way!" and I turned to see a bunch of people pointing. After a moment of hesitation, I did the only thing left to do and ran for the finish. By this time, I think the race was pretty much over. Most teams were probably over the finish line by the time I started running for it.
I'm pretty sure that would somehow count as a disqualification, but I doubt anyone cared when you're finishing dead last anyways. I don't even know if I managed to stay in the right lane with all my turning around. But I think they were all laughing too hard to care. My classmates certainly were when I saw them again. They really wished they'd had a picture of my face, with the look of complete confusion and desperation. Anyways, we later found the 4th runner was off in the midfield chatting away with someone, completely unaware that the race had even started. They didn't know until someone we sent looking for them told them the race was already over. So yeah, as I said, I use the word "team" lightly here.
I can try posting a few pics, but I'd need to figure out where I'm gonna host them first.
