Comet's Carry-On
The People That you Meet
By Julia "Comet" Weatherby

One of the great advantages to the sport of running is that you have so many opportunities to be social. You can meet and chat for hours with friends at races, training group runs, ARC club events and especially during those long runs. We all have our running friends. However, it can be just as interesting talking sports when you meet people while you're not training. For me, I've met all sorts of interesting people while traveling.

I was often traveling to Florida during the training for my first marathon, Motorola 2002. In my cube, I taped up all eight race brochures in the Distance Challenge series so that my coworkers would know how important it was that I train and go home on the weekends. My Austin coworkers flew to work the afternoon of the marathon, and told me how many athletes were on the plane. I flew out the next morning instead. After all those months of training, I was so proud to have finished the marathon, so I brought the finishers medal on the trip with me. I showed it to the first woman I recognized at the Austin airport, and she insisted that I wear it! So I did. I flew through Dallas, and while waiting for my next flight, a woman approached me. "Is that an Olympic medal?" she asked me incredulously. I looked at the medal and smiled at her, "Oh no, it's not..." and she immediately said "Oh." and walked away disinterested before I could give her a chance to explain why I'd earned it! Next time, perhaps it will be an Olympic medal.

On the way home from the Portland Bridge Pedal, I hand carried my cycling helmet onto the plane. Again switching planes in Dallas, I met a man in the elevator on the way to the Admirals Club. He asked me, "Is there something you know about the plane that I don't?" I laughed and jokingly assured him, "Don't worry. I'm sure you're not on the same flight as I am." I got more funny comments from passengers as I was boarding my flight to Austin. As I walked through the First Class cabin, I was stunned to see the same man from the elevator! He saw me and said "Oh no!" and we both laughed as I apologized for being wrong earlier.

Recently, I was on a flight that ended up being such a painful experience for me. I hopped on a completely full Southwest flight from Dallas to Austin. I sat in the middle seat, and neither of my seatmates seemed very outgoing, so I settled down with a Runners World magazine. Just before take-off, two people in the row behind me started talking to each other and discovered they were both runners. I listened to their discussions of weekly mileage, injuries and favorite shoes. I was dying to jump into the conversation, but it just wouldn't have been polite while being in the seat in front of them. As I heard interesting topic after interesting topic, I kept thinking to myself about how I was in the wrong row! I never did talk to them, but perhaps they may have noticed me deplane right in front of them as I was wearing my Motorola Marathon jacket.

There have been other times when the airline seating was much more fortuitous. I was sitting in my seat during boarding when my seatmate showed up. He put his backpack into the overhead bin and sat down next to me. It looked like he had cycling shoes in the outer mesh pocket of his bag, but I dismissed it as wishful thinking. Then I remembered that as I had checked in, someone else was also checking in with a huge bike box. Perhaps it was the same person, but I decided it probably wasn't. During the flight, he reached into the seat pocket in front of him, pulled out a cycling magazine and started reading it. The third clue's the charm! When he was done reading, I introduced myself and asked if he was a cyclist. We chatted for awhile during that long flight. I learned that he was on a trip with his buddies who all work for athletic companies in the Pacific Northwest. They had all worked at Nike together, but he was now working for FILA. They were going to Italy to watch the cycling race, Giro d'Italia! Not only were they spectating, but they were biking each stage of the event the day after the racers had finished it. It sounded like such a fun athletic vacation!

The next time you take a trip by plane, wear something that shows your interest in athletics and you just might meet another runner or someone who is interested in talking about it. This is especially the case if you're flying to and from a large race, such as a marathon. Last November, I flew back from the NYC Marathon on an American flight with a stop-over in Houston. Since not many people fly directly from Houston to Austin, nearly the entire plane for that second leg was full of passengers who had run the NYC Marathon. It was so fabulous to share and listen to all the race stories.

This article originally appeared in Running Austin, a bi-monthly publication of the Austin Runners Club.