I DNF'd My World Championships Qualifier... Here's What I Learned

Edmonton Half Marathon Championships.

What happened?

All right.

So let's talk about it.

Let me preface this by saying that I hate, hate, hate when someone has a bad race and feels like they have to go online and explain themselves to everyone.

You don't have to explain yourself when you have a bad race.

People have bad races, and it happens.

And yet, here we go because we're explaining ourselves about a bad race.

So touchdown in Edmonton, and I'm immediately feeling that this is going...

So Ed- Edmonton, Alberta, is the, the host of, of this race.

And so I get there, and I immediately realize that this is going to be a race weekend like I've never had before because as a runner who also covers running, I've been to events to race.

I've been to events to be a media member.

I have rarely done both in such proximity and at the same time.

So I get to Edmonton, and my schedule is the day before, I'm moderating the elite athlete panel, and on the panel sits a few people that I hope to run with the next day.

And then on the Sunday, I race.

So we get to the panel.

I, I ask these, these, these athletes questions.

We, we have four women and two men, and so I'll be racing the two men.

It's Andrew Alexander and Rory Linkletter.

And I ask them about the race.

We get the audience questions.

A member of the audience asks everyone on the panel to predict what my finish time is going to be, and I start feeling weird because I, like, kind of see myself as two things at the same time, like, someone who's going to compete in the race and then also someone who's covering the race.

I'm also slated to do the post-race interviews with the top five finishers, and in my mind, I really wanna be one of those top five finishers.

There's, like, this strange moment when someone asks Rory, like, "Predict Alex's finish time and place." And he says, "I think he's gonna run 63:30, and he's gonna finish seventh." And then some people in the audience go, "Boo." And then he says, "Well, who is he gonna beat to not finish seventh?" And it was like a...

It was, it was a...