Someone's Gotta Be Last!

I ran a unique kind of race on March 11th.  It's a Predict-Your-Time 4-miler.  You guess what how time it will take you to walk or run it, and the race director writes your name on a big chart.  The race clock starts ticking DOWN starting at 70 minutes.  When your time rolls around, off you go.  You can't wear a watch or timing device.  The idea is that if everyone ran a perfect race, we'd all finish at exactly the same time... 0:00.

Turnout was quite low this year, probably because of the weather - cold and windy.  Only 12 people showed up to run.  They give prizes to the top 10 people who finish closest to 0:00.  They were giving away high school cross country shirts this year that I thought were quite cool.  So my chances were pretty darn good to get one.

Since it was so cold and the wind cut right through my tights, I stayed in the church social hall until it was my turn.  I talked with some of the mothers of the cross country kids.  Suddenly the former race director came in and said, "Jeannie!  What are you doing?  Trying to give everyone a 20 minute head start?"

"What??" I exclaimed.  "Did I miss my start time??"

"Um, yeah!!! By quite a lot!"

I looked at the clock and it was at 29 minutes!  I should have left 10 minutes earlier.

Even in my fittest days, I could not have run this hilly 4-miler course in 29 minutes.  So I decided I would just run normally and see how close I'd finish to +10:00, which would mean a perfectly predicted pace for me.

I wound up running faster than I thought and finished at +8:25.  So that was good news to me, that I did better than I thought I could.  But it still put me in absolutely last place, by quite a bit, being off by over 8 minutes.

If you ever visit running forums or boards and read race reports, you might see the acronym "DFL."  I was DFL.  The D stands for "dead" and the L stands for "last."  I think you can figure out what the F stands for.  Obviously, whoever coined that term didn't like being last.

So I was DFL.  So I didn't get a T-shirt.  But you know what?  I was absolutely fine finishing last.  Somebody's got to be last.  There's nothing wrong with it.  I had a wonderful run and it was a beautiful day.  I was thankful that I was physically able to be out there.  I think we need to put a positive spin on the runners' acronym.  How about: "Delightedly, Fabulously Last!"