The Running of the Bulls

By Pitt Dickey

Aesop is not only dead. Aesop was wrong. Remember his fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare? Like Gershwin wrote, “it ain’t necessarily so.” The turtle doesn’t always win. For reasons which passeth understanding, I recently plodded the Running of the Bulls, a 10 kilometer race in Fayetteville. It was a splendid event sponsored by the Hispanic/ Latino Center featuring two bull mascots and freight train driven by a scared conductor. If you don’t like thinking metrically because it reminds you of the French, 10 kilometers is a few flutters of cardiac arrhythmia beyond six miles in distance.

Paraphrasing Lord Bulwer, it was dark and foggy morning on race day. The level of humidity was two spoons beyond pea soup. The race volunteers wore festive red sashes just like the guys in Pamplona. Spicy Latino music filled the air. The joint was rocking.

The start was behind the Airborne Museum. The front of the pack was mostly whippet thin runners oozing nervous energy and two fake bulls . I am no longer whippet thin. I was probably never whippet thin. Runners have a special category of people like me; we are called Clydesdales after the famous giant beer horses. We are not called Clydesdales because of our height. Being slow, I always start near the back of the pack so as not to be trampled by the faster runners. The pack nervously fiddled with their adrenalin levels waiting for the signal to run for glory. Other than napalm, there’s nothing like the smell of Ben Gay in the morning.

Bang! We were off. The leaders took off like rabbits. The back of the pack yawned and lumbered off like a herd of turtles. The trail went by the train station. Guess what’s on railroad tracks? Trains. The whippets crossed the tracks before Casey Jones in the 7:10 to Yuma came barreling along. The pack parted like the Red Sea. Unlike Gaul being divided into three parts we split in two. Those who got across in front of the train and those who had to wait. I could imagine Casey’s thoughts as he frantically blew the train whistle trying to warn the runners out of the way of his train. Casey pondered, “Who are these people? Why are they running across my tracks? Don’t they know I can’t stop? What’s going to happen to my pension? Did I bring a change of underwear?”

Runners tend to be competitive. Competitive people can be goofy. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility for some Type A personality to try to make a lunge across the tracks when it was a split second too late. Fortunately none did. No one imitated Norman Mailer’s book “The Quick and the Dead.” We were the quick and delayed. The turtles stood around waiting for the train to pass. Once the train vanished, the whippets were nowhere to be seen. Where to go now? Confusion reigned. Slow runners have no experience in running a road race with no one in front of us. We have a sled dog mentality. You just follow the people in front and don’t think about where you are going. Being front runners was new experience for all of us. We imitated a school of fish, first running first one way at an intersection and then suddenly turning back another way to find the trail.

The last race I had run was over a year ago. My training was limited to walking from a table at the MegaBooks to the coffee stand. I am slow, slow, slow. In any race you need to have goals. My goals were to finish before noon, run the entire distance and not to die. I am pleased to report I met all my goals. However at the six mile mark, some really nice guys driving the EMT vehicle pulled up beside me as I was going up the very steep Rowan Street hill and asked if I was alright. You know you appear questionable when the Med Techs slow down to inquire about your health. I waved them off and rumbled down Haymount Hill where I was delighted to be alive.

It was a splendid run. I’ll be back with the Running of the Bulls next year. A festive time was had by all. Hope to see you there.