Last but not least, the Fred Lebow Cross Country Championships revisited

Runner's World has an interesting article in their July 2015 about finishing last in races.  In it they speak to a variety of runners who have finished in the dreaded tail position.

I finished back of the pack (though not last) a few times, including the first chip-timed race I ever participated in.  I really wasn't too concerned with my time or placement, nor was I too concerned with anyone else either.  I was just happy that I finished because I felt that I was out of my league with all these seasoned runners.  While they spent months preparing, I made the decision to race just the day before.  I wasn't even sure I'd be allowed to sign up on race morning or how bag check worked (would I, for example be forced to carry my sweat pants since I didn't bring a bag to put them in?).

Part of the reason I finished near the end of the pack was because I started at the rear.  As most of the runners glided like gazelles through the morning fog after the gun, I shadowed them from a comfortable and unobtrusive distance.  I admired their trim frames and fast splits.

Unknown to me at the race start, the course curved around a track and up what I estimated to be a small mountain.  Traversing the steep path upward was a task that I was unprepared for. I hung in, which is to say that I survived.  

You face interesting challenges in life when you choose a situation impatiently or at random.  There is something to be said about randomly choosing a 5k race as your first.  Initially the words "Fred Lebow Cross Country Championships" evoked nothing.  Coming from the world of real estate, I figured that the event organizer used the word "championship" the way an agent uses words like "steps to the subway" or "located near Park Slope".  I didn't know who Fred Lebow was, that he was a legend, or that the people who consciously chose to run this particular race were as formidable as they turned out to be.   What I could see on the long subway ride into the Bronx on the 1 train were athletes wearing jackets that bore names like "Central Park Track Club." They were thin and fast.

From what I remember, virtually everyone finished the race in under 32 minutes, myself included.  In retrospect that's pretty impressive given the mid-course mountain, even for the fellow who finished last.