This post was inspired by a story I saw on Tumblr.
Apparently there was some kind of race scheduled at a local park or something so I’ve been trying to avoid the main trail but a little while ago when I had to cross near it I overheard the following shouted exchange.
Higher feminine voice: woo, look at you go! You’re jogging! Keep it up!
Lower masculine voice (panting): you know it! Last place is still a place, baby!
And goddamn if that didn’t rewire my brain a little bit.
Last place is still a place, baby.
I saved the link, knowing I’d want to explore it further. When I returned I saw it had attracted the following comment.
I know of a trail racing company that gives the slowest racer who finishes every race a DFL award: Dead Fucking Last. I was a little taken aback by this until I had it explained to me that those last-place finishers are pretty much uniformly people for whom finishing at all was an accomplishment: people undergoing cancer treatments, absolute beginners, runners in their eighties, extremely pregnant people, you get the idea. Moreover, what you see as this person crosses the finish line is all these sporty trail racers, many of whom finished the race literal hours earlier, cheering their hearts out because they respect that, yes, DFL is still a place, baby.
I love the humanity of these stories but there’s something about them I find disturbing. From an early age we’re taught to push ourselves to succeed. To do the very best that we can all of the time. That winning is what matters. I was born and raised in Liverpool, England. Given my lack of interest in sport generally and football in particular, it’s ironic that one of the best known motivational quotations is by former Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankley, who famously said “If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.” It’s an attitude echoed by Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna who described being second as “being the first of the ones who lose.” It’s refreshing to hear that being first isn’t the only thing that matters but the imperative to compete, to give it your all, is still there.
The photo I chose for this post is a case in point. It shows veteran Turkish runner Erdogan Dulda competing in a 10K run at the age of eighty-nine. He died two years later after suffering a heart attack during the Grand Atatürk Race in Ankara, a race he’d run every year since 1948. He competed in the Istanbul Marathon thirty-six times and won a gold medal in the European Veterans Athletics Championships. Those are astounding achievements and Erdogan is justly celebrated for them but we don’t have to push ourselves to such extremes, physically or otherwise, for our lives to have meaning. It’s not just that we don’t have to win the race. We don’t have to finish the race. Or even start it. Some of us can’t. Some of us simply don’t want to.
I’ve never been remotely competitive. I’ve never yearned to beat others or push my personal best. Never entertained ambitions or goals of any kind, in fact. I was proud of my academic success at school and university but exams measure what they measure. They say nothing about me as a person. I’m not better for having a first class honours degree than my contemporaries who left university with a 2:1, a 2:2, a 3rd, or no degree at all. By the same token I’m not less than for abandoning the write-up of my PhD thesis. I can’t call myself Dr. Baker but it would never have been as cool as Dr. Martens or Doc Martin.
I’ve written previously about celebrating our achievements no matter where they register on the scale of socially acclaimed success. Landed that new job you’ve been after? Brilliant! Taken a shower today? Well done! Baby on the way? I could not be happier for you! Got the laundry done? That’s great! Taken a rest day? That’s so important! Passed your driving test? Congratulations! Stayed clean / sober / safe another day? I’m proud of you!
This is expressed perfectly in the lyrics of the song Small Victories by English singer-songwriter Roxanne Emery who performs as RØRY.
Some people climbed Mount Everest today, and made history While I was still asleep Well, I got myself dressed today Small victories Small victories
So yes, last place is still a place. DFL is still a place. But so is watching from the sidelines or the couch. Or the corner table in your favourite coffee shop. (No prizes for guessing where I’m writing this blog post.) I’ll never run a marathon or climb Mount Everest but I have sat inside a tent that was once erected at Everest Base Camp. That’s a place too, baby.
Photo by sporlab on Unsplash.
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