A LOSS IS A LOSS (ALIAL)
February 29, 2008, Don Carptenter writes:
Five or six years ago I was told to stop running and I stopped. For three or four years I limited myself to walking and some biking, but then got the urge to run a little and finally began to do what amounts to a very very slow run. I am excited about this return to my favorite sport, particularly about the chance to compete in races. What follows is written in celebration of my recent participation in the Juana Run in Barron Park. It is not a race report of the traditional kind, as you will see.
A LOSS IS A LOSS
Runners have a tendency to delude themselves by thinking that they are exploring the outer limits of human performance, or even, to put it bluntly, celebrating life. Those of us who have thought about it, however, realize that this is all wrong, and that in fact we are exploring the limits of humiliation.
Now one limit of humiliation that immediately comes to mind is the humiliation one feels in qualifying for the Win is a Win award, ‘coveted’ by the Ancients since it was first established back in the late 1980s. To win a race by as much as a kilometer, as Chris Spain once confessed to have done, or to win by virtue of not fasting, as Nat’s brother did on the occasion of a Yom Kippur event, is humiliating enough, but the real humiliation comes when others hear about the event and present the award to the so called Winner, amid a certain amount of snickering and not a few snide remarks. I can attest to all this, having been a recipient of the WIAW award for the year 1990, during which I managed to establish the age group 5k award for 62 year old men in the state of Alabama (at a Women’s championship race) and then placed first in a field of four (including my wife Betty) in the Barlow Trail 10k, held near Mt. Hood Oregon in September.
In spite of all this I now realize that the WIAW award does not allow us to probe the true depths of humiliation. Even the most abject winner of the WIAW retains a certain amount of pride after the event in question, tiny as that shred of pride may be. But when a runner enters a race and is passed at the mile mark by a man pushing his wife in a wheel chair, he experiences a level of humiliation that is deeper and more devastating than the level any WIAW recipient can hope to reach. To illustrate this point, I offer below several photographs taken at the recent Juana run in Menlo Park, a race that Tim O’Rourke knows well (having been able to jump in as it passed his house). In the first of these I may be seen in the background in a red singlet, struggling to overhaul a woman who is clearly in no trouble at all. Behind me and to my left you can see some activity, but in the next photo it becomes clear that the activity consists of a man of some years pushing his wife in a wheel chair. They soon passed me, and as we turned onto a down-sloping street the pusher allowed the chair to roll free, occasionally darting after it to keep his wife headed in the right direction.
This was of course the low point of my race. Fortunately, there were four more miles to go and I was determined to win the 80+ men’s division (figuring that the guy pushing his wife wasn’t a day over 70). I wanted to look good at the finish and managed to put on a burst of speed for the benefit of the cameras (3d photo). In the background you can see what may be a stroller (probably with a brake stuck in the on position). Unfortunately, some 81 year old guy from Los Altos Hills, the only other guy in the 80+ division, beat me by 2 minutes.
In retrospect, my humiliation was so great as to justify the creation of a new AFA award, ‘A Loss is a Loss.’ I will make the key photo available, and perhaps we can get Marty Beene to mount it suitably, just as he did so well for A Win is a Win.