Someone has to come in last……..

A couple of weekends back I ran my second 10 k race, a local event benefiting lung cancer research, the Brocktrot. www.brocktrot.org
For those non-runners a 10k is 6.2 miles. The Brocktrot is a tough course because of its considerable amount of up hills and down hills, though in the Berkshires there are a lot of these. You might think the down hills are a breeze only you have to put your effort into not going to fast and pushing back against inertia. At least I do.

I hadn’t trained as much this year I had last year. A tighter work schedule and loosing good start up time in the spring following a heel injury put me behind where I was last year. But I’d done the race last year, had done a few flat land runs that were close to six miles and I am not beyond walking short distance when I am wiped, so I knew I’d finish. The question was how well. My goal was to finish and to try to come in under an hour. A pathetic time for a younger or more experienced runner but decent for someone like me.

The day of the race I didn’t think much about how I’d do. There are 200 people running on both sides of you, in front and in back and the road and hills are in front of you. It’s really hard for me to gauge how I am doing other than timing my pace at certain marks along the way. I seemed to be doing ok. Not great but ok.

Part of the race (a rare flat part) runs up the entrance road of Tanglewood, loops around a parking lot and then out another entrance and back on the road. It was at this loop that I could see a short distance behind me and "crap" I could see the ambulance. This follows the last person to the end [unless someone needs it] which means that I was close to the end of the pack. "Double crap". I have to at least come in a distance ahead of the freakin’ ambulance.

It was this moment that had me thinking about the topic of this post. There were people behind me, not many but still some, and someone was going to come in last.

In races of just about any kind someone is going to come in last. In some races it means you lose, such as an election or competition where you are a serious contender and there are times when you just put yourself out there to compete against others but also against yourself.

It’s easy to be philosophical about the last one over the line when it isn’t you and our culture doesn't always do well with the people who do not win. Yet more likely it is the person who comes in last, at least in a race like this, is someone like me who somewhat suspects they will be at the back of the pack but still goes out there for the experience, as a test against your own endurance, own tenacity and for the fun of the experience.

Why do we do that when we know the winners are so much faster than us and more skilled? For me it clearly a challenge of myself against the course and the clock; a marker of the work that I have done in training. There is little chance I will even see the runners who are 20 years younger than me who can finish the course in half the time or runners who have been at this for years and can practice every day. But it doesn't seem to matter. I think for those of us in the back of the pack it is the satisfaction of accomplishing something that we have had to push ourselves to do and that we did not give up when it was tough, when those up hills seemed to go on and on.

It makes me admire a little more everyone who puts themselves out there for a race, for a cause they believe in when the going is not smooth and easy or run for some election when you are getting trashed or hurting in the polls. It takes character to be willing to loose, to risk that potential embarrassment of coming in last by a wide distance. But it can also come with tremendous satisfaction of having tested yourself and finished. Maybe not first but well ahead of the many who were too afraid to even try.

So how’d I do? I finished and never even saw the ambulance again. A little over an hour, 176 out of 200 and I felt absolutely great and can’t wait until my next race.