On Thursday, April 26, 2012, a talented group of young ladies from the Boston area made their way down to Penn to run in the Penn Relays. The following is a firsthand account from one of the witnesses/survivors of this horrible experience, Joanna Murphy. Warning: the stupidity they encountered was so severe that you might actually feel physically ill while reading this. Better take some Pepto, and maybe even have a little bucket handy before you go further.
I knew things were going to be interesting when following the “Athletes Entrance” sign led to a 20 minute wait in front of a group of high school girls obsessed with their hot pink spanky shorts. This was followed by a security guard’s dumbfounded reaction to Diana’s “hi, we’re distance runners running the steeplechase and 5K” introduction.
“Where’s your number?” the guard asked.
“Uh, I don’t know….where do we get it?” Diana retorted. The guard was not only puzzled, but obviously annoyed by us so-called distance runners standing in front of her. She refers to her male counterpart (bold move, lady… whenever in doubt ask a burly male for the best course of action. Whatever you do don’t think for yourself). Her male counterpart happened to be leaning casually against the rail checking out the hot pink-clad high schoolers behind us with his hands folded across his belly. It was extremely classy (which is clearly a requirement for Penn Security).
“You have to get your athlete pass that’s inside your packet” he casually responded without looking up from the “scenery”.
“Awesome. Where do we get our packets?” Snapped Victoria. The guard finally looks up now.
“Down at 32nd and Walnut. Follow the sign to Athlete Packet Pick up…you can’t miss it”
“That would’ve been helpful to know beforehand” mumbled Victoria. The guard ignored her and goes back to checking out high school girls. We filed out of the line that we’d been holding up and made our way to Walnut Street.
At Walnut Street was clue number two that we were screwed. The “Athlete Packet Pick up” sign pointed down what Victoria called a rapist stairway. Unfortunately for us, that description looked fairly accurate, especially if your life parallels horror movie plots (which ours clearly was). It was a long set of cement stairs leading under the bridge to a maintenance storage shed filled with all kinds of contraptions necessary if you were ever going to knock out a group of women whom you wished to abduct. Things such as rakes, shovels and machinery loomed on the walls taunting us as we descended into the shed’s darkness. “This has gotta be a joke. This is not serious,” Victoria mumbled the whole way down. I laughed, which is what anybody would do walking to their doom.
At the bottom we met three men – a coach and two athletes. The coach was very adamant that the athlete packet pickup was closed (which is exactly what you’d say to a bunch of girls you wished to knock out…obviously we should not stray from the shed). Victoria and Diana did, however, do a good job of quizzing this man as to whether or not the packet pick up was actually closed while his two athletes chuckled at the discussion. “I just got back from there and it’s completely empty, but if you feel like going another twenty minutes out of your way be my guest” he says, slightly irritated. All the warning signs were there – trapped women in a dark shed with machinery (including lawn mowers – those are great for grating up limbs), male authority figure convincing us to stay in the dark place instead of leaving to get our packets…this was not looking good. Nevertheless, we decided to follow his advice and hoof it back to the stadium to try to get in without our Athlete Passes, which we apparently aren’t able to get since Packet Pick up was closed. We would’ve totally failed at surviving a horror movie. Luckily for us, real life is nicer. ..and that coach guy was right (so we found out later).
Fast forward 15 minutes. Diana marches up to the information booth. We should’ve known by now that following signs at Penn = bad news. I had fairly low expectations at this point, but the 21 year old (he was probably legal to drink) undergrad wearing a PENN FOOTBALL shirt behind the desk did not help my optimism…no offense to football players. Information booth conversation went as follows:
Diana: “We are running the distance carnival tonight and need to get into the stadium to warm up but the packet pick up is closed so we can’t get our athlete passes. Can you help us?”
Football Player: looking extremely scared. “Uhhh, you can get it in the morning. I think they’re closed now”
Me (in my head): No shit, that’s what we just told you. Tell us something we don’t know.
Diana: A little more aggressive now: “We are running tonight!”
Football Player:” Ohhh… tonight… Shit, I don’t know…”
Me (in my head): Awesome, way to do your part to prove my stereotype of stupid football players wrong. Great answer! What came out of my mouth is a little nicer : “Is there anyone you can call so we can find out the best way to get in?”
Football Player:” No…I can’t do anything”
Yeah, that’s what I thought…
Diana: “Well, can you put our feedback in that this is a very inefficient and frustrating process?” Football player guy just stared, obviously frightened, at Diana.
Fast forward 10 minutes. It was now about eighty-five minutes out from the start of our race (thank god Diana got us here early). We tried the first security guard; big surprise – he didn’t know what we were talking about and CLEARLY it would be against his god given right as a protector of the stadium’s security and prestige to let three steeplers and one 5k runner in. God forbid he did some critical thinking, even though it clearly wasn’t part of his job description. Ray Treacy was in the mix as well with his Providence ladies, obviously struggling as much as we were. This made Diana and Victoria angrier, but I found it comforting. At least if the entire steeplechase race was sitting outside they’d have to bring us in at some point in order to have a track meet. Victoria stomped out of line, fuming, and sat down on the bank just around the corner as we shuffled behind her. “This is fucking bullshit,” she ranted as she sat down.
Victoria decided to employ the “call a friend” lifeline – a grad student at Penn. Apparently he had officiated some meets before and could potentially shed some light on the (lack of) process we were facing. He met up with us as we were hanging out outside the East entrance. “I think this happens every year,” he explained to us, “The left hand doesn’t talk to the right hand, so the meet officials think that they’re letting distance runners in, but no one tells the security guards, so they keep thinking athletes are going in through the South Entrance. “ At this point, I was starting to think that scrapping the whole idea of a race and going for some beers might be a better option anyway (which given my results probably was the better option, but that’s another story). I entertained myself by talking to strangers – mostly distance runners turned away from the gate. “You can hang out with us; we’re running in almost an hour too…!” They were not quite as enthused as I. One guy sat down for a few minutes putting spikes in his shoes, but he was not so talkative and I quickly turned my attention back to the conversation Victoria was having with her friend.
“Tell you what,” he said, “Let me make some phone calls and see if I can’t get more information for you guys. Wait here and I’ll come back out and get you.” Perhaps too optimistically, I figured this was good news and at least we weren’t the crazy ones (always a comforting realization) in this situation. Diana, however felt differently. “But our situation hasn’t CHANGED!” she kept ranting. She was right – our situation hadn’t changed, but at this point I was finding entertainment in watching all the other distance runners try (without success) to get in. I figured, if you can’t succeed, you might as well revel in others’ failure…the foundation of sportsmanship, right?
It’s now around seventy minutes before the start of our race. Kyle McQueen and Will Feldman join us, having experienced the “tell the guard you’re a distance runner-get told to go to the next gate” routine that has now become commonplace amongst all distance runners at 6:50pm. We noticed that some other distance runners were gaining headway in their conversation with the guard outside the gate we were sitting at (meaning their conversation lasted longer than ten seconds and is more heated than before). So we wandered over to try to piggy back on their success (let’s call it persuasive drafting).The guard told us to go to the next gate, and that he didn’t have authority to let us in at this point. Big surprise. Victoria stepped forward and grills the man, telling him we’ve been to all the other gates, no one’s letting us in, and that we have an hour till the start of our race and not getting a proper warm up was going to be detrimental to our performance. Quote of the night: He said: “I understand, that, ma’am, but I can’t do anything at this time.” One hundred points for most helpful security guard.
Victoria ceded, stomped to the next gate while the seven of us struggled to keep up with her. She marched up to the guard there, told him that we had tried every gate, we had to warm up for our event, it’s in fifty minutes and we needed to get in NOW! I think he found this amusing. He quizzed her a bit, but laughed and opened the gate. All of us walked in, except Ryan (my boyfriend), who was trailing behind us. The guard stopped him and said, “Whoa, where do you think YOU’RE going?” Ryan was obviously annoyed, but I piped in before he said anything. “He’s running the 5K, what do you think?” I barked at the guard. Ryan was actually just there for moral support, but given the shit we’d just dealt with there was no way in hell we were going to pay for a ticket. “Oh, ok, then,” he said as he let go of Ryan and we all scrambled into the stadium. Fifty minutes to go, we got our numbers and got our warm up on. Regarding the numbers, there was one for the front and one for the back…seriously, what is this about? Is one of the officials blind? Upon returning to the stadium post warm up, we were confronted yet again by the security guard and told to go to the next gate. “NO, we are running the steeple in 30 minutes and we have numbers!” Victoria screamed at the guard. He sighed and let us through. Without Victoria Barnaby I would’ve given up, gotten beers and never run the steeplechase at Penn. She is a true friend – and friends don’t let friends drink without running first.

From L-R: Joanna, Laura, Diana & Victoria. Thankfully, they all survived and are able to share their horrific story.
In the February 2012 Running Times Magazine the Editor’s Letter featured five secrets to success that Warren Buffet’s wife reportedly imparted to their children. They were (in order): 1. Show Up 2. Tell the Truth 3. Pay Attention 4. Do Your Best and 5. Stay Unattached to the Outcome. Warren Buffet’s wife (or Warren Buffet for that matter) obviously never ran at Penn Relays.
Moral of the story: They give gold watches to the winners at Penn Relays to symbolize the fact that nobody knows what time they’re supposed to let the distance runners in. I made that up.
Just after the Penn Relays, we had received a race report from Diana Davis, and she had mentioned there was some difficulty in getting in. After publishing that piece, I reached out to other ‘survivors’ of the incident and that started a conversation between Joanna and myself, in which I suggested writing this up for The Level. It had potential to be a great little story for us to feature, and I think she did tremendous job of capturing the frustration of the moment and making us all feel like we were right there in the shed with them. Joanna knocked it out of the park!