- Joshua, you’re the real GOAT.
Running a marathon is a true challenge. The 42-kilometer (26-mile) race tests not only the participants’ physical fitness, but also their mental fortitude.
With that in mind, does it make the daunting task harder or easier if the runner has four legs?
That’s the question that recently faced the organizers of a Canadian half-marathon. Partway through the competition, an unexpected (and unregistered) runner joined the race.
That was Joshua the Goat.
Seeing the marathon runners pass his enclosure must’ve seemed entertaining to Joshua. He broke free of his collar and started running alongside the human competitors.
Actually, scratch that — at one point he was leading the race.
Joshua didn’t get to reach the finish line on his own, however. His owners caught him some 500 yards before the goal, but they did walk him there to allow him to complete the race.
And he did so to raucous applause from an enamored audience. The organizers even gave Joshua his own medal for competing in the half-marathon.
The Runner Goat
The race of our story was the T’Railway Trek Half Marathon, organized by the town of Conception Bay South in the Canadian Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. This half-marathon is quite a challenge.
And we don’t mean that just because of the run. The route the race took was so stunning that some runners surely found it hard to focus on their performance.
Starting from Richard Parsons Memorial Field, the 13-mile race concluded at Topsail Beach. The route followed the trails of the historical Newfoundland railroad.
Along the route was also a small business called Taylor’s Greenhouse and Pumpkin Patch. In addition to growing plants and pumpkins, the establishments also keeps a goat.
A goat named Joshua.
So, on September 29, the runners took off. In total, 250 contestants participated in the race.
Well, 250 contestants and one goat. As the runners began passing Taylor’s, Joshua started to get excited.
“We take Joshua for walks, he listens very well and will follow you,” Joshua’s owner Heidi Taylor told The Chronicle Journal.
“So when he’s seeing all the people running, he must have thought: ‘I’m going to go too!’” she mused.
And that’s just what Joshua did. He broke off the collar he had been wearing without challenge for years and started racing after the runners.
Great Performance
The human runners were understandably confused when they realized Joshua had joined them. They quickly adapted to their new running partner, though, and news about the unexpected contestant began spreading throughout the route.
“We didn’t know what quite to make of it,” Conception Bay South’s Mayor Darrin Bent told CBC News.
“We had just heard that a goat was running along the trail,” he recalled, saying that he was waiting for the runners at the finish line when the news reached him.
That’s also how Joshua’s owners found out he had run away. They started seeing social media posts about the racing goat, and eventually realized it was Joshua.
As soon as they did, they started tracking his progress through social media to go and catch him. In the meanwhile, though, Joshua wholeheartedly enjoyed the race.
He easily kept pace with the human runners for a total of 2.5 miles — nearly a third of the race. Not only that, he even led the pack at one point.
Finally, however, Joshua’s race came to an end. His owners caught him some 500 yards before the finish line and slipped a new collar and leash around his neck.
Fast Fame
With so little of the half-marathon left, though, it would’ve been a shame not to let Joshua finish it. So, his owners walked the remaining leg to the finish line.
As the audience noticed them approaching, they broke into cheers. Joshua may not have been a registered runner or completed the entire race, but he sure had captured the hearts of everyone involved with the race.
It’s no surprise, then, that he received an award for reaching the goal.
“We very quickly put a medal around his neck and he became quite the star,” said Bent.
“Most people who actually ran the half-marathon wanted their picture with Joshua at the finish line.”
Just like that, Joshua has become a local celebrity. He’s even been invited to attend next year’s race as well — not as a runner but an official mascot.
“To have Joshua join in and become a kind of a mascot-star of the event is something we didn’t expect,” Bent said with a smile.
“We’re just delighted that the GOAT of the race is really a goat.”