This weekend I ran in the Shamrock Half Marathon in Sacramento. It was a chance to meet up with my running namesake, Steve White – a much younger and much faster runner than I. The other Steve started running seriously a while ago and keeps getting confused with me and me with him. Since I am slower, I was always getting credit for his much faster times (I will take the credit any way I can get it), while he was always receiving the dubious attributes of my slower pace. Of course, anyone who looked at the ages could tell the difference but people don’t always do that.
So at the weekend, the other White Steve, was running as the 2hr pacer for the race (that means he runs with a sign saying 2:00 hours and he is supposed to keep to an even pace that will cross the finish line in exactly 2 hrs). This made him easily identifiable and I was able to meet him and thank him for improving my performance. Also, since he was slowing down to 2 hours in his role as pacer, I was able to run with him, and we crossed the finish line together – me a fraction of a second ahead of him, for the first and likely only time.
There is also a Steve White who was District Attorney in Sacramento and is now a judge. This lead to some confusion and misguided estimations of my position in the community. There’s also, what looks like a cheesy author called Steve White, even a black actor, and a British musician, a drummer. It’s apparently a very common name. A Google vanity search does nothing to uncover anything about me – thank goodness.
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