England's Cheese Run

How bad must your life be to sign up for the most dangerous foot race in the world, aka the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Run in England? Basically since the 1800’s, runners line up to chase a 9 pound cheese wheel that has a one second head start as it rolls down a 300 yard, grassy, uneven, somewhat rocky, sometimes concave, 45 to 90 degree hillside that they spray with water and characterize as “too steep to run down safely.” The cheese has clocked speeds of 70mph, and the bottom of the diabolical hill is lined with rugby players to catch the out of control men AND equally insane women. I mean, we’ve all fallen, we know what that feels like. BUT, have you “run beyond the capacity of your legs to keep up, to the point of becoming airborne while flipping to an inverted state where you’re suspended in air with your feet straight up and head straight down, only to land on a steep, wet hillside filled with rocks” fallen? Your body suddenly experiences a Simone Bile Olympic floor routine, only without the control. Who even came up with this idea? Who looked at that hillside and said, “YESSS!! This is going to be a huge hit! Let’s chuck a cheese roll down there and see what happens if we race after it?” Participants say it’s the best day of their lives! If you look at the pictures, you can tell it’s their best day because these people are ALL IN! The look of excitement mixed with terror on the front runner’s faces that have hit their super stretched stride at the bottom is priceless. How do you train for this event? What’s your strategy? Even the guy dressed as Superman at one point gets strangled by his cape during a summersault/manly cartwheel tumble. But they say it’s high risk for the spectators too. That would be my luck, getting hit by a 70-mph speeding cheese wheel right upside the head. Someone would duck and BAM! Right between the eyes. Yeah, I’d get hurt or taken out even watching this race, either by the cheese or an out of control runner because it’s not like they can stop, or even change course for that matter. It’s every man for himself out there. I just wonder what the founders in the 1800’s would say if they could see how popular this is now, and what they would think of the guys dressed like superheroes, a blowup dinosaur costume, or the one dressed as a pizza slice?