The Hare and the Tortoise - no fair Hare!

Artwork by Milo Winter. This image from The Aesop for Children is in the public domain. More information at Wikimedia Commons.

I remember the story of the Hare and the Tortoise from childhood. I loved the idea that slow and steady wins the race. But today, I learned that sometimes the hare wins!

I was enjoying a beautiful long run in one of our local parks today. Fall colors were everywhere and I was running at a good pace for me, even a little faster than usual for long runs. About halfway through my run, I see a shadow approaching in my peripheral vision. I'm used to being lapped by runners since I'm a fairly slow runner, but what? Wait!  Is that shadow WALKING?

Sure enough, a very tall man with a long stride (let's call him Hare) passes me (let's call me Tortoise), and he's WALKING! Damn the hare! I glanced down at my GPS watch, thinking my pace must have really slowed...but I was actually going faster than usual. I was doing an 11:37 pace. I estimated this dude Hare was probably doing less than an 11 minute mile WALK!

How could he?

The least he could have done was break out into a run before he passed me so I wasn't completely humiliated by a hare overtaking me. But no! Instead I detected a sort of swagger in his walk. Like he was waving his butt at me.

Now if the moral of the story was to be fulfilled, I should have found him snoozing under a tree somewhere ahead. But no, he was nowhere to be found!

To add insult to injury, he pealed off from the trail at some point, and overtook me again! I wanted to challenge him to a serious race but I was already eating his dust! Ugh!

Regardless of my humiliation, I still enjoyed the run and my cool down walk. The scenery was spectacular even if my running was not hare-worthy.