About this time every four years a joke circulates around the internet. There are variations, but the main point is that in every Olympic event there should be one normal person who is not an athlete competing so we can understand just how profoundly good the actual athletes are.
But a real-life version of that joke already exists, and people pay to participate. It’s called a road race.
I ran in such a race last week. It was the Deseret News Half Marathon, held every year on Pioneer Day, and it was great. I’m not just saying that because Deseret is my employer. It truly is a great event, thanks in part to the efforts of many of my colleagues, none of whom recognized me when I ran past them, which should have been my first clue that maybe I wasn’t looking my best.
My second clue should have been when, about 5 miles into the race, one of the marathoners, who started 30 minutes before us and 13 miles behind us, glided past my cluster of runners. Glided isn’t even the right description. It’s more like he floated. He was taking one step for every seven of mine. He had perfect form and had barely broken a sweat.
He looked the way I looked in my head. Of course, I did not actually look like that. If I did, I would be competing at an elite level and not in the middle of the pack just trying my best not to pass out.
Nevertheless, I completed the run feeling pretty good about myself, having finished under my goal time and, you know, surviving.
I was still riding that high the next day when I got the email that I was both looking forward to and dreading. The email said my race photos were available.
“Don’t do it,” a voice in my head warned. I’ve been burned before by sideline photographers shooting from the ground up at an angle that highlights all of my insecurities in my most physically taxing moments. I knew better than to click to view the images.
But it was like Schrödinger’s email. I would never know the images were bad until I knew they were bad. And there was always the slightest chance they might be good. So I held my breath, clenched my teeth and clicked on the link.
The photos were even worse than I was expecting. At best I looked like someone who needed immediate medical attention and at worst I looked like a person new to Earth and a human body, attempting to use their feet for the very first time.
I immediately spiraled, as is my tradition upon seeing my race photos, and within an hour everyone in my family had banned me from waving my phone in their face and asking, “IS THIS HOW I LOOK?” So I had no choice but to turn to the internet for consolation. There, I learned I am not alone. Bad race photos, it seems, are a universal part of the hobbyist running experience.
I was delighted by the photos shared in this Reddit thread and comforted by comments from race-day photographers who explained that getting a good photo of a runner requires one-in-a-million timing. In a New York Times article about humiliating race photos, photographer Corey Rich explained, “In any one stride, only 10 percent will look graceful. ... the truth is I’ll shoot 75 frames of a person running past me, and only two might be good.”
The Times article concedes that it’s easier for photographers to shoot elite athletes who have bodies that seem to have been made to run fast. There are entire photo collections of Sha’Carri Richardson looking strong, relaxed and gorgeous at the finish line. Sha’Carri looks like an Olympian because she is an Olympian. Weekend warriors are not Olympians. Nor do we have the composure, grace or bodies of Olympians. Instead we have tomato faces and normal, exhaustible bodies that we use the best we can to try and meet our goals in the time that we have in our normal, everyday lives.
That determination among so many normal, nonathletic people, with wonky strides, gaping mouths and limited lactate thresholds, limping for 3 or 10 or 13 or 26 miles, just because they want to prove to themselves that they can, is something I find beautiful.
Even if the photos say otherwise.
