Winning

Winning is very important. Make no mistake about that. If you have any doubts about that
you must have been out of the New York area during the Yankee mania that dominated the area during October. A team that couldn’t draw 20,000 people to games in August
attracted hordes who thought nothing of waiting outside for 48 hours to pay double and triple normal ticket prices. Then 3 ½ million showed up for a parade.

It was legendary Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne who is first credited with the oft-quoted
.” Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser.”

And then there is running.. I am pretty certain everyone who has every run a race has been asked at least a few hundred times by friends, co-workers, family and neighbors
“Did you win?”.
The question is almost never by runners so if everyone in the above categories is a runner then you never have been asked the question.

If you’re like most of us, you have learned inventive ways of answering. Of course there’s
always the lie “Yes”. After giving that answer, I rarely get asked another question.

I actually did finish first at a small two mile race 10 years ago, but in a large majority of my races, I have won nothing more than the satisfaction of finishing. Soemtimes I ran well, sometimes I didn’t, but I left no imprint on any race I entered. In over 200 starts, I only dropped out of one.

I’ve learned more about spectators perceptions of runners by working the finish line at races. There is much crowd attention paid when the lead car heads back with the first
place finisher just behind. After about the first ten finish, attention wanders.
Based on what I’ve seen, no one is paying attention by the time I finish, with the exception of club members and friends. And I am considered an above average runner who normally finishes in the top fifth of a race.

And yet, every time I toe the line, I consider myself a winner. How many of the 30,000
stories from New York will most people ever hear? There are so many great stories in there. The news will only tell you about the winner(s) and maybe a human interest story like a couple getting married.

A person who probably never ran a race,
José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955), Spanish essayist, philosopher.in Quixote, “Preliminary Meditation” said it best

“There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other. “

Now, if I can just remember to say that a few times.

Slowing Down

Slowing Down

Before I begin this article I would like to take a quick poll. Raise your hand
if you run in races when you know you are far off your normal conditioning.
Good, I’m glad that most of you raised your hands.

I may have not raised my hand a year ago when I was in fantastic condition. Races were competitions to me, the chance to show off my hard work. Races could wait until I was
Ready to run my best.
But the past year has been humbling to say the least. It would be easy to stop racing until I gave a more “representative” performance, but I decided that would be stop me from racing altogether. So races have become my source of conditioning.

Although I have proceeded to run personal worsts at almost every distance I have attempted this fall, I feel none the worse for it. I know I have been getting some funny looks from people who know my faster version, but runners are generally a very supportive group who admire anyone who toes the line.

At the Swamp Devil 15K in November, I was passed at the five mile mark by a runner whose build and attire said “jogger” out loud to me. In the unlikely case that someone would recognize him if I identified his dress I will leave that anonymous. I happily had some good miles near the end and saw this guy very close to me. I said to the guy with me, “We can’t let him beat us”. But he did, just slightly. And at every race there have been runners I have rarely competed with regularly dusting me off.

Almost every race since August has had a similar theme as I have continued to manage
to reach my diminished goals while running times I would have not believed possible a year ago. If this experience has taught me anything, it is simply to never take good conditioning for granted. Remember the effort it took to get you there.

These articles are not easy to write and I am not sure they make for good reading either.
It is much easier to write about how you ran your latest PR in the marathon. I had no problem last year pouring out page after page about my marathon PR. I am sure runners would rather read about success stories instead of the struggle just to run. But for those of you who hit the skids as I have, I hope you’ll save this and realize life goes on and you should race no matter how long it takes you. It’s still a lot better than the alternatives.