I had the bad luck to run out of gas on the way back to a weigh-in . My fault for not switching tanks.

Anyway here is my ? why was the motor so hard to get started again? I pumped the ball hard several times and it did stay hard but motor would not start it would only fire long enough to disengage the starter. It took well over ten minutes to get her going again. Also does it hurt anything to run the fuel system dry at 5600 RPMs?