A two-and-a-half-year-old bloodhound has ‘accidentally’ taken part in a half-marathon and come in seventh.
April Hamlin from Elkmont, Alabama, let her dog Ludivine out of the house for a wee and, next thing she knew, she had finished seventh in the county’s inaugural Trackless Train Trek Half Marathon, reports 9 News.
Ludivine sneaked out of the back garden and made her way to the starting line of the race. She then ran the entire 13 mile course, finishing in an impressive one hour and thirty minutes.
Ludivine’s grand entrance to half marathon running!
Posted by Elkmont Half Marathon – The Trackless Train Trek on Monday, January 18, 2016
April only found out about her pet’s exploits when race volunteers starting texting her pictures of the pup wearing her medal.
In an interview with Runners’ World she said:
My first reaction was that I was embarrassed and worried that she had possibly gotten in the way of the other runners.
I can’t believe she ran the whole half marathon because she’s actually really lazy.
Jim Clemens, who finished the race in fourth place, just ahead of Ludivine, says she was prone to distraction:
She would run off to romp through streams and into yards to sniff around for a while.
According to some of the other runners, she also ‘wasted’ some time investigating a dead rabbit at the two-mile mark.
However, it seems she was determined to finish, with Jim adding:
Every time I thought she had dropped off to go back home, I would hear her coming back up to me, and she would race past me up to the two leaders.
It sounds like if she’d had her head 100 per cent in the game she could’ve picked up the gold medal!
