The men's 5,000-meter race was divided among three tracks, with the runners further split into groups. Jiangnan University Town had many departments and colleges, and each class was required to send at least one contestant. Even with three tracks, nearly ten batches would be needed to complete the race.
The runners were ranked according to their results, with no second round. A second round would have killed people.
Based on past experience, each race took around twenty to thirty minutes, so the men's 5,000-meter event could be completed in four or five hours.
However, there were always oddballs every year, and this year there were especially many.
First came Song Shuhang and the black-clad fellow, who ran the entire course at sprinting speed (although the black-clad fellow was still two or three steps behind). After that came another oddball—the fat Yang Shangfa, who at the beginning had been "a pair of fellow sufferers at the ends of the earth" with Song Shuhang.
After the race began, he started at the pace of a leisurely jog after a meal, steadily hanging at the rear of the 5,000-meter runners.
After running only three laps, he was already unable to hold on, his face turning pale. He changed from jogging to a brisk walk, then to a slow walk, and finally from a slow walk to turtle-like shuffling.
After shuffling for a stretch, he still had to clutch his waist and gasp for breath.
With stamina like this, what kind of mindset had his classmates possessed when they sent him to the 5,000-meter track?
Twenty-five minutes later, all the other contestants on the track had finished the 5,000 meters. Yang Shangfa, however, was still running, walking, and stopping. By then, he had covered a total distance of 2,100 meters. His face was pale