Eighth Place
Yesterday, my granddaughter ran the third leg of her team’s 4 X 400-meter relay in our regional track meet on the way to state. She took the baton in sixth place out of eight runners. Four hundred meters later she had about a 10-meter lead. Her teammate finished the race in the same place, first. It wasn’t their best time of the year, but it got them through to the finals, which will be run later this afternoon.
I watched them do the same thing in the area meet the previous week, and it was fun to see the child of my son excel and do so well. But it got me thinking. For every winner there is someone who finishes in eighth, regardless of the meet. It could be the first race of the season or a turn in the Olympics. Someone will finish last. At some point they will have excelled enough to make the team and run the race only to meet others who excelled and were just a bit stronger and faster.
Seems a good life lesson. You can work hard. Want something. And still not get it. Your body might betray you. The weather might work against you. Other people might be better than you, or just lucky. You never know. As for my granddaughter, she also qualified for the finals of the 300-meter hurdles, in seventh place, which may explain why she seems so level-headed on the field. She gets it and does it because she loves it. She wants to win, and does, but understands the progressive difficulty and still keeps trying. So, here’s to the eight-place finishers. Winners simply because they ran the race.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale.