Posted by Monetta Roberts on August 26, 2008 at 07:56:45:
In Reply to: Did I Miss Something? posted by Amy Floyd on August 25, 2008 at 23:33:00:
Ames:
You post reminds me of something I used to do, strictly for fun, back in the day when I was racing well, and actually finishing ahead of people. And just for context, some background: Since my first one, I've always loved to race, still do, but it's never been personal to me---race is race, as a foreign coach once said to me....after the finish line, I'll almost always congratulate or hug my competitors, win, lose or draw: we're back to just people once the race is over. There's plenty of room for R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the finish chute.
And I've gotta add, I think there's a real art to graciously congratulating someone who bests you in any given competition (esp. someone you'd really rather finish ahead of) ~OR~ saying nothing, if you can't say something as nice and simple as, "good job."
However, in my experience there has always been a class of people, male and female (on account of the small field of racewalkers locally) who routinely used to say post-race things like, "I had the flu all last week;" "I haven't trained in a month;" "I did a hard 20-miler just yesterday;" etc., etc., etc. Now I admit I'm overly sensitive, but what finally sank in was that the message these folks were sending, consciously or not, was that I had not actually beat them in the race, but that they had technically beat themselves. That usually didn't sit real well, and so I came up with a silly thing that at least made ME feel better about the whole exchange, and I used this literally for YEARS. No matter what excuse people gave for having a less fast race after I'd bested them, my stock reply became (always!) a very perky, "ME TOO!" It gave me no end of amusement, and the better the excuse, the higher the amusement:
"I just had a baby last week!" "ME TOO!"
"I was just training today, I wasn't really racing." "ME TOO!"
"I slammed my foot in the door, just after I arrived here this morning and it's probably broken, but I raced anyway!" "ME TOO!"
"My left leg actually fell off at the second water station and I had to stop for a bit to reattach it!" "ME TOOOOOO!"
Give it a try sometime, maybe I'm overly simple, but it sure is a lot of fun to me... ~mo~