Running for the Red Lantern Prize, yet again

On Saturday I ran the annual Carlisle Old Home Day 5-mile race. Back in 1991, this same event was the first road race I ever ran; I’ve done several others in recent years, but this one is always my favorite.

I have such mixed feelings about participating in races. And here I should point out that the copy editor in me wants to change the three-word phrase “participating in races” to the singular and simple “racing,” but that’s just my point: “racing” seems like a hyperbolic word for what I do. Every race I enter these days, I go into with the expectation that I’ll likely finish last. I never actually do finish absolute last – usually I fall in the bottom ten percent of finishers, regardless of the size of the field – but I’m always braced for the possibility.

Lots of people have tried to boost me out of this rather defeatist mindset, reminding me that it’s about competing and finishing rather than winning. And when I say “lots of people,” I of course mean my mother. Fortunately, no matter how often she tells me it’s wonderful that I race at all and I need not worry where I finish, there’s always my 11-year-old son to represent the counterpoint to that argument. “I’m just afraid I’ll finish last,” I admitted to him once on the way to a race. “Oh, Mom, I’m pretty sure you will!” he responded cheerily.

It’s easy to say that since I’m obviously not a competitive racer, it shouldn’t matter to me where in the field I finish, but there’s something that causes me an almost primal anxiety about being last. Even though road races take place in safe, well-populated, festive venues, toward the end of the run I often develop this irrational concern that I’ll be left behind. I know it’s not a literal worry: being alone on the course would not in any way be a problem any of the places I’ve ever raced (which include Concord, Massachusetts; Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; and Bath, Maine). But toward the end of a race I seem to revert to a grade schooler on a field trip, believing I’ll come out of the bathroom at the Museum of Science to discover my class’s bus has already departed from the parking lot. As my oxygen level thins slightly and my brain capacity diminishes a little, I become afraid in a childlike way of being left by myself.

In Saturday’s Old Home Day run, fears of being left behind were particularly ridiculous since at no point in the race was I farther than three miles from my own house. But more importantly, I know it sounds self-pitying to say I worry so much about coming in last. I know how lucky I am to have the physical ability to run five miles; surely there are countless women my age suffering from any number of disabilities who might read this and say “If I could participate in a road race, I’d never think about complaining about my finish time.”

On a rational level I agree with them, but there’s more to it than that: sometimes I feel compelled to ask myself why I bother to sign up for races when I’m sure to be one of the last people to cross the finish line. (At the race I’ve run twice in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, it’s a field of 1,000, so being in the bottom 10 percent still means nearly 100 people are running behind me, but my focus is always on the 900 ahead of me.) Race results are usually posted by name and hometown; when I take part in races in other states, I often picture people reading the results and saying “I can’t believe this woman traveled all the way from Massachusetts just to finish last in our race.”

But, indeed, there are other ways to look at finishing last than, well, finishing last. My friend Nancy Cowan reminded me of something we both learned when our children were second-graders studying the Iditarod, Alaska’s legendary sled dog race. “You’re not the last-place finisher; you’re the Red Lantern Award winner!” she said to me one year. And maybe the Iditarod organizers have the right idea. As written on the official Iditarod website, “Awarding a red lantern for the last place finisher in a sled dog race has become an Alaskan tradition. It started as a joke and has become a symbol of stick-to-itiveness in the mushing world.” In that sense, I’m the sweep: bringing up the end to confirm that the race both began and ended safely for all of us who stuck to it.

So I won’t give up on road races just yet. I’ll keep working for that Red Lantern Prize. Someone gets to be first; someone has to be last (or very nearly last. Last among those who actually ran the whole course.). When you see me cross the finish line, you know that another year’s road race has been successfully run. Time to start looking ahead to next year. Who knows, maybe a slower runner will have moved to town by then.