Last can be better than first
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In every race, from primary school egg-and-spoon sprints to presidential campaigns, the winner takes it all – the gold and the glory, the congratulatory headlines and hoopla – while the loser’s standing small (in Abba songs, at least).
But coming last isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For starters, it’s less crowded at the back of the field. Plus, when you’re chasing the wooden spoon in, say, the New York City Marathon, it’s perfectly reasonable to stop and scoff a cheeseburger along the way, as my friend Niva Retimanu did in 2014.
Niva, the deprecatingly selfappointed ‘‘World’s Slowest Samoan’’ (better known as a newsreader at NewstalkZB), finished dead last in her first marathon in Marlborough in 2012. In Queenstown two years later, she again took tail end honours. Twice she has run in New York and both times she crossed the finish line in Central Park in the dark. Even the disabled athlete she was supposed to be guiding through the Big Apple finished well ahead of her, after she stopped to complete a live radio cross to Mike Hosking.
Niva has now written a heartwarming and hilarious book, Leading from Behind: Winning While Coming Last (Random House, $40), about her journey from drinking, smoking slob ‘‘with a big gob’’ to motivated marathon runner.
It reads like Monty Python’s guide to marathon training. She clocked her personal best in Paris last year – 6 hours, 35 minutes – but, having missed the marathon’s cut off time, her result wasn’t officially recorded. Ditto in her most recent outing in Beirut, where she took a wrong turn and added 2km to her total race distance. Mind you, she’s making progress: she came sixth from last, ahead of only ‘‘the injured and maimed’’.
Read between the lines, though, and Leading from Behind is a tale of triumph. Niva’s dropped 30 kilograms. She’s stopped smoking. She fits jeans for the first time in years. She’s fit and healthy. And, when her book debuted on the New Zealand non-fiction bestsellers’ list, only Richie McCaw was ahead of her.
In a tenuous bibliophilic segue, last December I was asked to contribute an essay to a new book of Love Letters to the Landscape (due out this October). The publisher, Paul Little, gave me a January deadline. I’m not good with deadlines. January came and went. So did February. In March, he gave me a gentle hurry up. In April, I received this email:
‘‘You’re probably aware the deadline for contributions to Love Letters to the Landscape has passed. Sometimes when deadlines pass and people don’t hear anything, they think their contribution is no longer required. Embarrassment may ensue. But sometimes when deadlines pass and people don’t hear anything, the person responsible has simply got preoccupied and let it slip. Which is the case here. If you’re still keen to be part of the project, I’d still be very keen to have you. After all, some words always have to be the last ones in, so why shouldn’t they be yours?’’
By the time I eventually filed my submission, sheepishly, in midMay, summer had been swallowed by the death throes of autumn. Here in the Hunua Ranges most of the leaves had already fallen from our trees, their crowning glories ripped off by winter’s brutal Brazilian wax, with one notable exception: the flaming-foliaged swamp cypresses in our wetland.
Taxodium distichum is a most curious conifer. Also known as the tidewater cypress, because it thrives in the coastal plains around the Gulf of Mexico, it likes to sink its toes into the mud. Indeed, its wet feet are a real talking point, for as the tree matures it produces peculiar aerial roots, like stalagmites rising up from the swamp.
In other parts of the world, Taxodium distichum is better known as the bald cypress, distinguishing it as one of the planet’s few deciduous conifers. As it defoliates, it takes on the dishevelled appearance of a geriatric orangutan with hairy armpits. But stripped bare, it’s almost as spectacular as in full blaze, as the fallen needles knit together around its trunk in a coppery Axminster carpet that lasts well into winter.
As I said, finishing last isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if your crippled feet look like Victoria Beckham’s bunions.