Seriously, I had the exact same problem. But when you're angry, you don't play well. I just stopped after a while and did something else. When I was calm and happy again, I'd try until I got mad again. If no go, I'd do something else.

For the race, what I did seemed like I was going out of my way to avoid those birds. I also tried to get every single balloon possible (i.e. running after every balloon I saw). I ended up with 17 balloons and 2 bird hits on my race.