As marathon runners made their way through winding forest pathways and residential roads on Newfoundland’s east coast on Sunday, they were joined by a four-legged competitor who has since become a sensation, says one mayor.
The Town of Conception Bay South hosted its first T’Railway Trek Half Marathon on Sunday. When its 250 runners passed a local business called Taylor’s Pumpkin Patch, Mayor Darrin Bent said a new contestant spontaneously joined the race.
“They have a resident goat, Mr. Joshua. And when the runners went past the pumpkin patch, the goat decided, ‘Well, I’m not staying here, I’m joining them!'” Bent told CBC News.
Joshua ran alongside the runners for approximately four kilometres before his owners caught up with him, said Bent, though they allowed Joshua to finish the race.
“And we very quickly put a medal around his neck and he became quite the star. Most people who actually ran the half marathon wanted their picture with Joshua at the finish line,” said Bent.
He recalled he was waiting at the finish line at Topsail Beach when news spread that a goat was running alongside participants.
“We didn’t know what quite to make of it. We had just heard that a goat was running along the trail,” he said.
Someone else suggested that maybe a runner had brought a goat to join them in the race, he added.
Bent said Joshua has become a “highlight” of the race and runners were taking photos and videos of him as they ran alongside the goat. Not long after, he said people were posting photos of Joshua online and some have been shared hundreds of times.
“Everybody is talking about it…. It’s putting a smile on a lot of faces,” said Bent.
He added he anticipates the story of Joshua the marathon running goat will quickly spread across the province and country.
Heidi Taylor, Joshua’s owner, woke up Sunday morning to find social media awash in photos of her goat mingling with fellow runners. She figures he must’ve slipped his collar while she was asleep.
Taylor and her fiancé used the Facebook posts to figure out Joshua’s whereabouts along the race route, and they “took another collar and leash along with a bag of cheezies” — his favourite snack — and went off to find him.
“We take Joshua for walks, he listens very well and will follow you,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“So when he’s seeing all the people running, he must have thought: ‘I’m going to go too.”‘
The half marathon itself was more than a year in the making, and Conception Bay South’s mayor says Joshua added something special to it.
“To have Joshua join in and become a kind of a mascot-star of the event is something we didn’t expect and we’re just delighted that the G.O.A.T.” — an acronym that stands for Greatest of All Time — “of the race is really a goat.”
Bent said he hopes Joshua will join in next year’s marathon — not as a runner, but to hang out at the finish line.
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