Uwharrie Mountain Run 2008 – Pictures
2008/02/04
Since I’m still bumming around with a broken shoulder, I was unable to run the Uwharrie 40 miler this past weekend. Vonda was running the 8 mile race, though, so I took the camera along to snap a few pictures.
I had only planned to take a few shots of Vonda on different parts of the course, but because I was using her D-SLR, several people appeared to think I was a professional photographer (they have no idea how wrong they were). At the beginning, there is a big climb that causes a traffic jam and plenty of walkers. After Vonda went by, I stopped taking pictures and waited for the crowd to pass. While sitting there, I heard a couple of comments from people who assumed they weren’t interesting, or good enough, to take pictures of. If I had been holding a point-n-shoot I doubt these folks would have even noticed me. However, the SLR seems to be the equivalent of a flashing neon sign that says, “Course Photographer! You must run the next 30m at full speed and try to look cool!”. So instead of continuing to disappoint everyone, I started snapping photos of every runner that came through while I was out there. Most of them seemed to enjoy the photo op. Amazingly, one or two actually complained about it, but I took their photo anyway.
:-)
So, if you were racing the 8 mile course and were one of a hundred or so runners somewhere in the middle, then I might have taken your picture. The full resolution files can be freely downloaded for personal, non-commercial use.
People on the 20 miler were complaining that the gimp-armed photographer wasn’t showing up in time for their glamour shot, and that he shouldn’t get any future race business. I held in my sweat for two hours waiting for my picture. It was exhausting.