Race… videos?

All right, I hate to be the bearer of bad news… but I just received an e-mail from the Maine Coastal Shipyard Half Marathon letting me know that they’re thrilled to be including FREE race videos!

Stationed around timing mats, they’ll capture a video of our running at various points in the race and we’ll get a free compilation.

“We think runners will like sharing videos of themselves as much as they like sharing photos.” -e-mail from race organizers

Ummm… really?

Race photos, I love.

You take a race photo and a grimace is a sign of determination. Add motion to that? It becomes clear that it’s a grimace of defeat, you’re being passed left and right, and you’re going to be lucky to finish.

Even the most evenly paced runners can look a bit sad by mile 10 if you capture them in motion. We’re tired. If we’re running our best race, it hurts.

I’m ok not seeing what this looked like in motion:

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This might have been good, but it’s probably not as fast as I expect it to be:

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I DEFINITELY wouldn’t want to see video of this:

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So here’s how we’re going to handle this.

  1. Read your race emails carefully, particularly for longer races. Find out if there will be video, and where.
  2. If there’s going to be free video, pick up the pace before each of those timing strips, concentrate on your form, and relax your grimace. Just temporarily – you can slow it back down and continue drooling on yourself thirty seconds after the timing strip.
  3. Don’t watch any video releases until a month or so after the race when you’re on to the next thing and seeing yourself limp-jogging across the 10 mile marker isn’t going to be quite so deflating.
  4. I’m going to buy and share my video from this upcoming half (which I haven’t been doing my long runs for because YAY swimming!) and you’re going to watch it, and I’m going to survive you watching it, and we’re all going to have a good laugh and be ok when (heaven forbid) we happen to not look our best while exerting maximum sustainable effort on our way to the finish line.

We’re runners.

We’ve got a sense of humor.

We’ll be fine.

tutushot

 

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6 comments

  1. Really? Videos? Whose brilliant idea was this? Love the pictures you included and I have a few prize ones of my own. Can’t wait to see the videos. They have not offered that for any of my races – yet.

    1. There IS the chance that we’ll have awesome race videos just like occasionally you get that awesome race photo… I would love to watch what I look like at the beginning of a 5k, or even at mile 2 of the half it might be fun. I can’t WAIT to see video of Greg running… seeing him run is a beautiful thing. But, yeah… there will be bad videos of us running if this trend catches on. And we’ll have to just laugh and keep going 🙂

  2. Actually, I’m quite curious to see what I look like when I run; however, I probably wouldn’t share it with anyone (unless I was incredibly graceful).

    1. Greg once filmed me slow jogging past the Eiffel Tower – I wanted a picture of me running by it, and instead of taking photos, he thought it’d be funny to make me go as slow as possible “so it wasn’t blurry” and then videotape that. It’s pretty funny. But other than that I haven’t seen a video of myself actually running… and your comment makes me realize it’d probably be good/interesting to see, to watch form etc.

  3. This is so great! I just got a clip of my 5k finish, complimentary from the timing company. I thought it was kind of cool – but when I actually watched it, I realized it was too blurry to really see anything other than myself as a blob running across the finish line. So…not a big deal!

    1. Ok that’s reassuring 🙂 Though a 5k is one where it might be fun to see video; I feel like it’s the longer races where I really have noooo desire to see the slow jog at the end!

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