The First Time I Was Beaten Bye A Woman (I Mean In A Race)!

Since I am sure folks are getting tired of my whining rehab, and also since I am getting old, I thought I would start to alternate stories from the past into this blog every other time or so to keep things interesting. I will also keep practicing with my new wireless scanner/printer and upload old photos that go with the story.
This story is from the summer of 1993. Terry, Deb, and I went down to West 18th street to have Terry and I run a 5k. This 5k ran a flat quarter mile to a turn that went straight down into the flats. At the bottom of the hill was a cone in the center of the road that you turned around, and then climbed back up the hill, and then made a left turn to a flat quarter into the chute. Terry and I went barreling down the hill. He was in 4th place on the way back up the hill shortly before I got to the cone for the turn. He would eventually end up 3rd overall, and bye far the fastest young person in this race. I got to the cone in 11th place, right behind this fast woman whom I was catching. As she went to make the cone turn, she hit a huge patch of grease/oil in the road, and went down hard to the ground. Now normally I would laugh and try to step on the competitor if I felt it was advantageous, but it was a small woman after all, and therefore was not any kind of threat to my placement in the race. So I stopped for a second and helped her up and then took off up the hill now in 10th place. The hill was a steep killer, and I was only able to overtake two runners on the way up, and felt pretty secure that I was going to place somewhere in my new masters 40-44 age group. As I lumbered to the top of the hill gasping like a zombie, Deb was at the corner taking pictures, and Terry was there to try and help me sprint in. The woman you see in the photo is Kitty Consolo. She was a semi-professional runner with Team Ohio out of Columbus Ohio who happened to be visiting friends at the Northeast Running Club in Lake County Ohio and chose to do this race for speedwork. In that last quarter mile she absolutely dusted me. She was the first woman to ever beat me in a race. Now since then, I have been beaten by hundreds of women, as they are young and fast, and their numbers in races have outstripped men. But that was the first time.
Now Kitty is still running and teaching college in southern ohio. Her greatest claim to fame is being the two time winner of the cleveland marathon and at one point being ranked 22nd female runner in the world. But I will always know her as the first woman to ever beat me in a race..... And as an odd side note, the shoes I was wearing in this race I foolishly chose to run the JFK 50 miler in about 16 months later. They came completely apart bye the end of the race, with tears around the toes and with the sole seperating from the upper.....