The meaning of penultimate

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am a creature of habit. Routines are my good friends. This does not mean I am averse to change or adaptability, in fact I have learned to embrace that as well. But there can be comfort in sameness. Or, perhaps, annoyances with sameness – as I tend to repeat the same tired lines and jokes year after year after year after year. And so it was refreshing and funny when Vess posted the following status (or whatever it’s called) on Facebook last week:

 

I live 2344 miles from Poughkeepsie, yet EVERY time I do a workout there is a crazy bearded man in the back of my head screaming "this is the penultimate" on my second-to-last interval. Congratulations Pete Colaizzo, you have permanently scarred me.

Somewhere along the line, more than 20 years ago I am certain, I started noting loudly the second-to-last (penultimate) interval of hard interval workouts – whether they be on the track or trail. This was not done just to show off a fancy vocabulary word – penultimate does, indeed, mean next-to-last. Rather, it was to focus on the fact that the second-to-last interval is always among the most difficult. Anyone can be a “workout hero” and blast out the final interval. Much like the third lap of a four-lap mile race, that penultimate interval takes a lot of digging deep. The finishing kick is important and often glamorous. But more often than not, that penultimate is the make-or-break – in a workout, in a race, in a lot of things, really.

So while I have “permanently scarred’’ Vess with my wild-eyed and loud vocabulary lesson, I hope to heck that he crushed that penultimate interval up in the thin air out there. Nicely done!