This weekend the Washington Post had a story on the "racing presidents", the characters who come out during the fourth inning at every National's baseball game and race around part of the outfield. It seems that "Ted" (Roosevelt) has never won a single race, and is in fact approaching his 500th consecutive loss. The writer of the article argued that it might be time for Teddy to become a winner. Of course there are entire web sites devoted to this issue (http://blog.letteddywin.com/presidents-race-standings/). I was at the Nats-Marlins game on Sunday and saw Teddy notch loss number 498.
As trail runners, a lot of us have probably come to accept the fact that there is no realistic chance that we will ever win a race, so on the one hand it's not too hard to accept Teddy's record. On the other hand, it does bother me to see him wondering around out on the course and not even making it a priority to locate and get to the finish line. Focus, Teddy, focus!!!
Even the great ones have their bad days. Check out these two hard losses - there must be a lesson in this for all of us. This first one is the women's finish at the 2007 Chicago Marathon. Oh, oh, indeed ...
An older example is this one with Steve Ovett, a world record holder in the mile, running against John Treacy over 5000 meters in London back in 1980.
