My First Last Place
Ricky Bobby had it all wrong
In the film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, the fictional NASCAR driver quotes his estranged father as having told him, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” If that were true, it would mean I’ve been last in literally every race I’ve ever taken part in. I’ve picked up a few age group firsts here and there, but never first overall. Did it bother me? Not a bit, because I don’t consider myself to be in competition with anyone but myself — I’m working on my own goals.
But last weekend, for the first time, I attained the milestone I assumed would one day come — the overall last-place race finish.
I knew if I kept racing it would likely happen at some point — age eventually has its way with all of us. It wasn’t something I looked forward to or, heaven knows, actively sought. In fact, before registering for the Hunting Hollow 10K, I checked out the previous year’s results. It’s a pretty small trail race in the hills outside Gilroy, CA; last year a few people finished slower than my projected time. So I showed up on race morning, plunked down my $40 entry fee, and pinned on a bib feeling reasonably confident that while I surely wouldn’t be first, I’d only be a ‘Ricky Bobby-last’ — in other words, at least one person would finish behind me.
