Olomouc Half-Marathon, Jana and Darren
Recently I ran in the Olomouc Half-Marathon in the Czech Republic with the wonderful Jana (see the cute blonde on the left). It was her first “half” so I made a training event out of it. I’m going to make a point of running more events with friends of various running levels, it reminds me to have fun. We still make reference to the dreaded “BFA” that passed us at the end of the race.
In running an event for “fun” I can look at Olomouc objectively and see that no matter how well panned events are there’s always the potential for a “gong show” ending. Imagine training for months, perhaps even years. All of your effort is focused on a single event, it’s your life. Many, many people and factors are involved including the all mighty dollar. The big day arrives, an hour of running later, it’s all over. Crossing the finish line with a fantastic sense of accomplishment, it appears you’ve won the race. For Stephen Kibet and Stephen Tum, both of Kenya, heartache followed shortly after as they were disqualified. They had followed a media truck off of the course in the middle of the race resulting in a disqualification. If ever there was a time to hate the media this is it.
