Jerks on the Half-Marathon Course

Regarding Sunday's half-marathon I ran in, I noticed something again that had happened to me the previous half-marathon I participated in more than a year before.  At a relatively early time in the race (with this one it was around the five-mile mark), a male runner passed me...and then slowed down, as if he were trying to express something to me.  I, in turn, had to slow down and get behind him, because at that time runners were coming at me head-on in the opposite direction and he had essentially forced me into their path when he passed.  I think he knew this and deliberately pulled this stunt just to get my attention.  A little while down the road I passed him again...and then he would speed up and pass me...and then slow down.  This went on for miles.  He was changing his pace over and over again while I kept at a pretty constant rate.  Finally, toward the race's end, he seemed to be permanently behind me.  Until just as we were about to cross the finish line, when he suddenly sprinted full-throttle past me and crossed the finish line.  I meant to ask him after the race what all this b.s. of his was about, since he was obviously much younger than me and I looked like a pretty old dude.  But this creepy person had disappeared.  Later I found that he was in his early thirties by looking at the results. 

This guy obviously was trying to personally compete with me among the 262 runners entered, for reasons only he knows.  So he was competitive: I get it, this is a race, after all.   But had he done what I did and run at a more challenging pace for himself, he would have been perfectly capable of running five to ten minutes faster.  I myself was spent at the end, with no capacity to sprint to the finish line.  So he, in my opinion, is little more than a coward in his sport, too chicken-**it to take a chance and see what's he's really made of.  Instead he picks a "fight" with a complete stranger who is old enough to have been his father...

A similar instance occurred at the DeLeon Springs Half-Marathon I ran back in January 2012.  Another runner decided to do this same coy act on the course of speeding up and then slowing down for me to pass him.  And then sprint past me at the end.  Another dude who could have finished much faster had he decided to gut it out like a real man and not pick a contest with another entrant who wasn't even in on the "joke".